December Daily: Day Thirteen

We're so proud of DS#1! He participated in his first debate tournament and he reached the quarterfinals--one of only 3 from his school! I'm going to provide probably too many details below, but I want to remember some of this for later when I do a full size page on this event.

DH and DS#1 got to the school around 8AM. He had his quarterfinals debate at 8:30AM. As DS#1 puts it, he "lost his first elimination round" and got a "shiny medal" for it.

Next came Impromptu Speaking. For each of 2 topics, he had 3 minutes to collect and organize his thoughts and then he had 5 minutes to speak. The first topic was "The good thing about household chores is..." DS#1 said that he gave three reasons (with supporting information):
--I get rewarded.
--I like to help my parents.
--It helps prepare me for later on in life.

His next topic was "An accomplishment I'm most proud of is..."
"I got into the quarterfinals of the debate tournament":
--This is my first year of debate.
--This is my first time at a school competition this large.
--It was challenging.

They got home at around 3:30PM. We still have no idea how he did because the awards ceremony wasn't going to be until 5:30PM. Hopefully we'll find out on Monday when DS#1 goes to school. We're still so very proud of him because DH and I would not have been able to do what he did at his age, and we still have problems with public speaking even now. DS#1 was eager to do this, and he did it so well! :)

Later that afternoon, we went to Fuddrucker's to eat dinner, then we headed to "Santa's Railroad Wonderland" at the local Texas Transportation Museum. In December every year they transform the place by putting up lots of lights to make it more holiday-themed. They even had their version of Santa Claus named "Choo Choo Claus". We happened to miss out on meeting Choo Choo Claus, but I'm sure DS#3 was not disappointed. We got to ride a real train down a short track. We were in the caboose outside so we really got to experience the beautiful weather and see all the lights. They also had lots of model trains set up to run. DS#3 was absolutely fascinated with the trains. They even had a "Thomas the Tank Engine" train running on its own track. DS#3 is just now being introduced to that but he loves it like any other vehicle with wheels.