Award night, again.

A few months ago the kids mass entered the Reflections contest at our local school and they each entered an item in four different categories; only one other girl in the whole school entered more than they did by entering 5.

They surprised themselves by each taking first place in at least half of their entries, and Tig got first in three. Their first place entries went on to the district level in December, and this week we went to the district level award ceremony and found out that they each took first in that level for their stop motion videos! Teagan also got an honorable mention for her photography. They were thrilled at the thought of winning, but when they were called up on stage to answer some questions about their videos, that's when they were rethinking their coolness levels.

One video from each age group was chosen to go on to state and the PTA president was impressed that three of the four video winners were from the same family and wanted to hear from the amazing Van Traap video trio. The kids knew everything they needed to in order to answer her questions, but once they were on stage, blinking in the spot light, imagining the 200+ people in the audience, sweat started dripping down all three of their lovely foreheads and the stress was almost too much! Garrett played with the cuff of his pants during his question, his right foot dangling in the air as he held his too long jeans by the cuff. Owen turned his head into Teagan's stomach as he answered, and Tig had the 'deer in the headlight' look as she pushed 6 words out in hopes that they made a complete sentence. As soon as they were done Owen ran back and crawled in my lap instead of returning to his assigned winners seat up front. My poor kids don't have that 'calm ability to talk to anyone' that I always hoped they would have. They seem to have inherited my displeasure for being in the spotlight. I can't blame them.
Now their videos move up to the state level and I can only guess what will happen if they win that level. We may have to skip that award night, they aren't going to want to show up if there is a chance they have to get up on stage again!