Eli and his crew of documentarians defended their state title and won a second chance to compete at Nationals in DC. The only drawback was that we did not count on this, and had planned a trip to Yellowstone to celebrate my parent's 50th anniversary. Although it was heartbreaking that Eli couldn't be with us, he deserved to represent his school and his state in DC, so we sent him off with his peers and his lovely teacher, our good friend Tim. The boys had a great time in the capitol, making it once again to the final round of documentaries, and ending in 5th, 3 places above their finish last year. Despite temps in the 100s, the crew had a great time site-seeing. Tim figured out that it was necessary to bring a frisbee on all outings, and everytime a boy started lagging, he'd send them after the frisbee- he has them trained like dogs- they can not see a frisbee slicing through the air without chasing it down. It got them to where they needed to be. Although I know they had fun at the time, these outings were referred to as death marches in retrospect.
Eli and Sam finished up their stay by taking first place in the dorm room decorating competetion. Their theme was crime scene, and the current resident of that particular dorm room is probably wondering about the permanent blood stain (really, its just red ink...) on the floor. The HD staff enjoyed that the murder weapon was Eli's top-banana award (made bloody with aforementioned ink) that he won for helping out with tech issues during the competition. Their crowning glory moment was when all the clues pointed toward Mr. History as the perp and they 'handcuffed' him by binding his wrists with ducttape. Typical for teens, they did not think their plan through to the de-handcuffing stage and rumor has it that Mr. History's wrists may never be the same. It may be their last trip to Nationals, regardless of project strength! But they feel like they went out with a bang.
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