I am pretty sure this picture will give you an idea of how everyone felt on Sunday!  What an incredible experience!  For a team to go to the World Festival hoping to experience everything they could, enjoy it all and just do their best to winning the highest honour they could, is JUST awesome!! We are so very proud of this team, we have seen such growth in them individually, and as a group! This will definately be a memory they will keep for a lifetime!  We were so very proud to have been part of it!
So now Cananda, and Ontario, get on board!!  Parents, investigate FLL, go into your schools and ask for lego robotics programs, turn on your Science teachers to what they can achieve!  We all ready know of one little guy who has brought out his robot, invited a friend over to learn about it and is all fired up for next seasons "Food Factor Challenge". 
Wake up and see what our kids can do!
The Sentinels will be at the Canada wide Science Fair May 16th  at Seneca College.
They will be showcasing their robot at the Canada Day festival in Burlington July 1st.
Any upcoming presentations or celebrations we will post here.

Saturday was a day of mixed feelings for everyone.  The short week was over, and because the children had been announced the night before there was no anticipation sitting in the FLL awards room.  There was incredible excitement for the other teams that were given awards, and many tears were shed for their excitement! There wasn't a lot of time to spend with other teams due to the schedule but you do make some friends and hope to see people again.....many teams were veterans, they had been there before!  But for us rookies the excitement of the whole week was terrific!  The hard part on Saturday was that everyone all ready knew who had won and so it felt a little flat and it was hard to sit there for so long waiting for the announcement, many of us decided we would rather have had the tension and stress waiting for a BIG announcement. 
The 1st place Champion Award winners are given the honour of sitting on the stage during the closing ceremonies of the FRC competition. Once the Sentinels award was given, we were late to arrive for the FIRST FRC closing ceremonies as we had run overtime.  We were whisked off the stage and ran to the Dome to spend the next 45 minutes crouched under the media cameras while we waited for an opening to be announced and go and sit on the stage for the FRC closing ceremonies. We were taken to the bathrooms in 2's at a time (so the team would still be there if we were called on stage), we had just sat through a 2 hour ceremony!  The kids were awesome, they didn't complain about doing it again and they were great on stage when we got there, there was no fidgeting or whining, John and I were really proud of them. 
Unfortunately the team did not get to celebrate in the FLL room with the other FLL teams, so we have no pictures to share of them with the 2nd place South African team or the 3rd place Florida team!  Or any other team.  By the time we finished the FRC ceremony and found some food, our children were exhausted!  We tried to attend the Finale party but everyone wanted to just go back to the hotel and crash!  So we did.  Everyone did different things then.  On the way back we met an FTC, FIRST Tech Challenge team from California, with 3 girls.  They invited some of us into their room to see their robot and find out more about FTC, which we are hoping to start up for our high school children next Septemeber.  I have no pictures of this at the moment, but I am sure someone will share some in the coming days.  Some of the kids hung out, parents were packing cars, some of us tried to get some sleep...as we were all pretty much leaving the next morning.

Saturday morning we had a tour of the FTC and FRC pit areas and playing fields.  It was very interesting, but we struggled!  It was booked for 8am!  It would have been nice for a lie-in, maybe breakfast in bed, etc.  But the die-hards that we are, there we were watching the competitions. Actually it was very interesting, especially since we want to start an FTC, FIRST Tech Challenge, team for next year, this will be for the 14-18 year olds who are growing up from the E-Bots program but still want to be involved in robotics and there is not a program within their high school. As you can see from the attached picture the high school teams are a little more creative in their costumes and hair!  YES that is her hair!

We had a fabulous lunch at the Olde Spaghetti Factory, all together, we actually had everyone in one place together!  Nanny & Grandpa, the token grandparents along on the trip (Mike's) bought all the adults champagne and the kids special drinks!  Then the families paid for our meal which was very nice of them!  Remember that we had all ready been announced as the Champions?  Well there was another team in the restaurant, the MRI's who came over, all of them clapping for the team!  It was really cool to see the smiling faces of all the kids on both teams, they all knew the work involved in achieving 1st place.  This team has an awesome group of boys who put on a super performance at the ice cream social, and guessing becuase they were so good, they were also asked to perform at the closing awards ceremony.  Their youtube video of their performance can be see here

At the end of their performance the Australian team comes up to join in, very well done.  All the teams who performed did a great job, it will be something we will have to try and do when we go back to world festival, hahaha did you catch that?  This win has made some hungry kids, even more hungry for next year, what will it bring?  who knows.....

I am actually writing this part of the blog after teWe are back and trying to believe that last week even happened!  It all seems so surreal, it was such a whilrwind affair!
So, Friday, I was going to explain the day.....so from memory now, here we go.
The mornings were early, the team met at our room at 7:15am fed, dressed and ready to go.  We were  very excited as we had a callback that morning at 10:15am.  But before that we had to be on the robot table for our first qualifying match. 
We arrived at our booth and spent some time saying hi to everyone while the robot guys on the team went over to the practice table and put the robot through its moves.  The process of getting to the robot tables begins a 1/2 hour before your match, you have to sign in and then queue up to walk down to the tables.  It takes almost 10 minutes to walk between the two buildings, one is the convention centre (where the team pit areas are)  and the other is the dome where the St. Louis RAMS    team play and where the tables were set up.  
The 1st round on the table did not start out well, the first task the teams robot does is zoom across the table to hit the hand and receive the patent.  The robots attachment does this with pneumatics and takes about 1.5 seconds.  The attachment went out but got stuck going over the broken bone which it usually clears.  This unfortunately unnerved Mike and Jack, who operate the robot a little and the rest of the run was not smooth.  It turned out at the end of the match that the broken bone had an extra layer of duo loc on it to stick it to the table, this raised its height so the attachment couldn't go over it.  The table judge fixed it and then let the boys run the task again and gave them points for it, they scored 295 total out of 400.

This is a picture of our families sitting in the stands at the robot tables watching us.  There were 31 of us in total, 7 team members, 2 coaches and 1 student mentor coach and then 21 family members, all wearing orange t-shirts that said Sentinels on them!
After our 1st competition which also involved some judges watching the teams the team was asked to go back to our booth as the judges wanted to visit them in our booth.  Apparently while we were gone to the tables some judges came by too.

When we returned we met up with some more judges, different ones who wanted to see us on a table with the robot, so they took us to a judging room like we had been in in the morning and the kids set up the pieces, then they ran some of their table tasks.  The judges had lots of questions and wanted to know and understand how the team had worked together and strategized the table route for the robot, the design of the attachments, they were full of questions.  We couldn't stay long as we had to be back on the table for the next match.  The boys took the robot over to the practice tables to fix a few things as we had little time left befor the 1/2 hour check-in.  While we were there, 3 more judges we had not met came over to see the robot and see how it performed.  The team did their best with questions and answers while Mike fixed some things and then, they were off, running  to the dome to compete. 

Yes, you are seeing correctly, this was the cheerleading squad of Anthony, Kathleen, Chris, Amanda and Thomas dancing the macarena with Stephanie on the sidelines of the table!  We found MORE judges here at our table to see the robot, the video of this run is will be on youtube asap.  It was a spectacular run, "ANA" the robot did a perfect 400 point run!  When we approached the table we didn't think we would get the full 400 points as the Japanese team had seemed to be the fastest to the hand or the patent, but when we faced off against them, we beat them to the hand!  What a shock!  We later spent some time with this team as they were fascinated with how the team had built the attachment and used the pneumatics.  It was awesome to have the robot do what we knew it could and do the full 400 points.

We went back to our booth very excited for our last run.  The boys spent some more time at the practice tables and we all sat and finally had something to eat!  Our nerves were just shattered!  Ok, maybe us the parents' were!
We had a bit of time, so we spent it with our sister team from Indiana and completed a friendship challenge we had to do.  We had to collect some buttons from the FRC and FTC competition pit areas.  This gave us an opportunity to interact with another team, the hard part was the whole day on Friday we were on opposite schedules so it made it really hard to spend time together.

Our last run on the table should have been another 400 point run, but it wasn't, :(  We had a light calibration program on the robot but there was a spot light on the table that caused some shadows when it was run and so it effected the robots performance.  The score was only 260.  It placed us as 6th for robot performance, but out of 82 teams, that wasn't a bad position!  Congratulations to the Hammerheads from Florida who won the robot performance!

The booths closed down this day at 5pm which gave people time to go and have dinner.  The families split up, it's hard to feed 31 people together!  There was a suprise concert booked for Friday night for all the FIRST participants.  Will.i.am and special guests were performing!  Each team was given 14 tickets to use for the team, coaches and a few parents or siblings.  We were all set to use ours, when John was approached by FIRST with a special offering, 3 teams had been randomly chosen to sit in a special area at the concert, it was being filmed for television, and sit near the stage.  We chose to do this but had to give our tickets back and received 7 + 2, team + 2 coaches.  I chose to sit out and let Steph use my ticket as she is younger than me and would relate to the performance better.  Some parents were able to scoop some leftover tickets from other teams.  None of us expected the evening.....after an hour of performance, the FIRST organization "heads" came on stage and made the announcement that the Sentinels had won the 1st place CHAMPIONS award!!  This was on the schedule to be announced on Saturday.  This was exciting news! I have heard from some of you that knew people down there that the team had won on Friday night, every one wondering how come it was announced early, this was how it came about. 

okay....so last night i typed in the whole days activities from yesterday and the internet cut off as i was trying to upload!  there is so much to tell you...but i will keep it really short right now and give you the highlights....last night at a special performance of Will.i.am and the black eyed peas, the Sentinels were announced as the Grand Champion World Festival winners for FIRST LEGO League for 2011!!!!!!!!!!!  The team won first place!  Since the internet is so bad here in the hotel i am not going to try and tell you everything because i do not want to lose it again....we will update this with pictures and more info as soon as we can!!!

well, here I am a lot later than i intended but wow!  have we been busy!  The children got into their booth space yesterday afternoon and started working on putting vinly letters of the sponsors onto the pop-up tent we have.  I stood in line to register the team and get all the important papers and John went off to a coach's meeting to discuss the next 3 days.

Once we got the tent up the balloons came out, we brought "canada" balloons and a neighbourhood business blew them up for us.  Then it started....the buttons!!  All the teams hand out buttons or extras and the kids go around and visit everyone collecting the buttons.  They decorate their shirts, pants, hats, anywhere they can find to put on their buttons.  The Sentinels were handing out the 1000 buttons they made, the 800 bookmarks they made (with a lego charm on the end of the string), the 800 pieces of maple syrup candy they brought, the 800 Canada pins they had, the 80 Oakville pins, and the 900 Canada activity sheets they had....oh yes and the 160 Canada card games they had!!!  Needless to say we were a popular booth!  They also have a candy guessing game, how many candies in the jar and someone will win them.

It was very heart warming to sit in the back of the tent and just watch the kids interact with these teams from other countries!  There were a few tears on my part as I thought of what an awesome experience this has been for them and what they will learn and remember for years to come.

The Pit area closed at 5pm and then the kids went out for dinners with their families and returned to John and I for some "extra" coaching time for todays judging sessions.  Not too bad, the younger ones were in bed by 9:30 and the older ones did a bit more work and were gone by 11:30.

But it was an early morning...we were in the pit area by 7:30 as the sentinel robot was on a practice table by 8:45.  The kids have to sign in a 1/2 hour earlier than their matches and then stand in line to get to the playing field, the walk there takes almost 12 minutes as it is in a completely different building!

Unfortunately the first practice round was not a success and they knew there was something wrong they would have to fix.  It turned out that Mike had lowered one light sensor and not the other so they were not able to read properly.  That would explain it and it did, they went back to the practice round on the official tables and scored 400 points HOWEVER, they put the red blood cells in the last mission to the end of the table instead of the white ones so they were docked 15 points!!!

There wasn't much time to worry about it as we had to go into a practice room at 11 for 1/2 an hour before our judging sessions.  Everyone had the jitters, the lines were all wrong, people were not sure when they were supposed to speak, it was very scary!!  BUT they pulled it off, just like they usually do and went into the project judging and there was not a mistake or hesitation in their delivery.  THe judges were very intrigued with their project, they asked ALOT of very good questions which the kids were able to answer.  It was a very good judging session and one that they really could not have done better on, we were very proud of them!

 The robot room was next, and Jack started in with the Sentinels wanting to make a small presentation, which they did, until Michael started to speak about the robot and its attachments and then the one judge couldn't wait, he wanted all the attachments on the table and was so very intrigued with their robot and strategy in design.  If you have ever seen the Sentinels robot perform or look at the design and build, the kids have really done an amazing job!   It is very impressive, and the judging room went very well!

The core value room was an acitivity like they are used to and then they had to present a core value poster which was new to world festival this year.  They did this all very well too, again, we thought they had done their utmost best and there was an incredible sense of relief when it was finally over!  They were done!  

ah ha, they aren't done!  Tonight, after watching the opening ceremonies and some really incredible performances by some very talented teams, they made the announcements for tomorrows call backs........ and yes the team has been called back which is a postivie thing!  The judges would like to see them again for more information, perhaps clarity.  There were 12 teams called back, Tomken Road which was the core value team from Ontario also got a callback!  So now the tension is back!  Not really!  the kids have done amazingly well, we came to have fun and get the most from this experience that we could and when you see them interact with the other teams and visit the booths we sure know they are doing that!  Tomorrow we shall see how they can do on 3 qualifiers on the robot table and the callback!  

It is an hour behind here but I'm still tired!  So we shall add some pictures if we can and then it's off to bed, another long but FUN day tomorrow.
More later....follow on twitter as Stephanie is trying to keep things updated! 

We are here, well some of us are, the robot is here!  Three more team members arrive this afternoon.  It was quite a drive down here, easy drive but the rain was something fierce.  A couple of times we had to put the flashers on as we couldn't see more than 10 feet ahead of the car!  But it was an easy drive, it took us 13 hours and then there it was.....the big arch that welcomes you to the city.  At this point, we all cheered and said "hey Mike, look we are here" , his answer was simply....."what, what, oh that's nice" and then back to sleep he went!  Typical 14 year old!  Apparently typical, because the same response was heard by Amanda's parents when they told her to look at the arch!  :)
We are trying to sort our the schedule for the day and figure out when we setup our booth and when we can practice.  The internet is ridiculously SLOW from our rooms, so I have visited the business centre to type this up.  I will update later and include some pictures of the days activities. 

WOW, it is hard to believe that the time is almost here.  The children have been feverishly working this weekend on the last minute things on their list and we are just about to start packing up the car!  The next time we see each other will be in St. Louis!
Four of the families are driving the 13 hours to St. Louis and 3 families are flying into what we hope will resemble an airport (St. Louis had a tornado 2 days ago and it did some serious damage to the airport!).  We will be setting up our "Pit area" on Wednesday and will be sure to upload some photo's. For now, we will say so long, we are down to our last few hours of packing and then we will be on the road.....St. Louis here we come!

We are 3 weeks away from the FLL World Festival in St. Louis and there is alot of excitement in the air!  Stay tuned to the Sentinels adventures as we try to keep up with the exciting moments of the challenge!