a winning weekend...

This past weekend my 9 year old son took part in Destination Imagination.  

This is an event sponsored by the US, but also used in International schools abroad.  It culminates in a weekend long event  filled with workshops and instant challenges that the teams had to solve.  

As the main focus for every group, they each have a central challenge that they must present. They work on this throughout the year.  They put everything together themselves and have very little help from their team manager.  It is a problem solving theme throughout the weekend, helping children learn how to work as a group as well as having to come up with creative ways to solve the challenges.

My son's group chose DI've got a secret...and won their group!  They were spies that were stealing a secret from a Doctor and his laboratory.

They also make the weekend fun by having pin exchanges...we never exchanged, just kept buying new ones to start our collection for the following years!  

My son's favorite workshop was building a crane...which his group abandoned him, so he got to keep it and bring it home.  He worked very hard on it and is very proud.  Do I have an engineer in my future??

Typically, those that win their group go on to the finals in the US.  This year our group chose not to go, but hopefully we can next year! 

And then as if that wasn't enough....

my son also had a tennis tournament on Sunday.  It was his first on a clay court.

He had a fairly easy opponent.  He won it 6-0.  They were played as a regular set like the pros.  The last point for the win was quite dramatic.  He had to run to get the ball close to the net, he fell face first and dropped his racquet, but he made the point and won!

So, he scraped his knee a little, and it hurt some, but no big deal right?  We were getting ready to leave and go have dinner when the coach came over and said that now he was going to play the final!  Another set to 6.....

well, he wasn't sure because he was hurt and tired...but he did it!  I was very proud of him.  He kept looking over when he was down and wanting to blame his knee hurting, but I nor my husband gave him and ounce of sympathy. (until afterwards of course!)

This opponent was more of a match for him.  They were going back and forth until they got to 6-5, my son was up and he was serving for the match.

For all those tennis challenged out there, you have to win by a difference of two...hence he had to win 7-5.  Well, he lost his serve and went to a 6-6 tie breaker.  It was heart wrenching every time he looked over with his puppy dog eyes almost filed with tears....but I kept my game face and he pulled through!

He won the tie break 7-3.  

What a champ!!!