the spelling bee!!

what fun! mom and nick didn't win (their team was called the killer bees) but they did a great job. they went out on fricassee. the words in that bee were really hard! hossay, parerphernilia, catastrophe, balustrade... see, some i can spell, some i can't. fluorescent! i knew that one. well, i just typed it wrong (thank you spellcheck!), but i'm pretty sure i got it right last night. oh, and get this: i won a prize! not a top prize, but a minor prize for coming in second place (along with like, 10 other people) in the literary quotes competition. i knew pretty much all of those (except the name of the dr.seuess book that quote was from, and i missed the harry potter quote. guess i should have read those after all!). that was an audience challenge portion of the night: they read a word that we had to spell (1 point) (spell correctly of course. i missed at least 2 of these), then we had to name the work the quote came from (1 point), and the author (1 point). the other quotes were from a tale of two cities, the road less traveled (turns out there's just one L in traveled, but spelling in the titles didn't count. phew!), and twilight.

when mom called last night to tell us who won the bee (a team of teachers from our school. it was down to them and a team from lincoln academy. glad boothbay won it!), nick said to nina "we didn't win the lobster."
"i don't like lobster," said nina.
"mom did win a hat though," he said.
"i like hats!" enthused nina. "can i have it?!"

so there you go, a hat is better than lobster. i think maggie would disagree though.

maggie was considered by many to be the highlight of the evening. the first time the killer bees took the stage, she cheered very softly "go grandma! go papa! do your best!" (do your best! how cute!). then, when they were spelling catastrophe (m-a-g-g-i-e, that's how i would have spelled it), she was trying to yank one of those giant gym floor mop/brooms that they use at the school down on her head. i had to dart over to pull her away. and then, when they took the stage to spell fricassee, she yelled "GO PAPA! GO GRANDMA!! WOO HOO!! GO!!" and it was so, so cute. she sounded just like a little cheerleader. i had a quick moment of fear, because you can never be sure what that kid's going to say when she has everyone's attention, but she was perfect. whew!

hey, stay tuned for more pictures. we just got a new digital camera!