Yesterday was the annual Biz Bee fundraiser for the Literacy Council (last year I was in Hawaii, and my coworker Liz took my place. They got out on the word "dieffenbachia," a type of plant. Liz was so upset because she has two of them in her house lol). Denise took this year off and Liz was on the team again. I'm always so nervous before spelling, especially since the Literacy Council was spelling first and I was the very first speller (they do a drawing to determine the order of the teams). I just kept thinking "stick it, stick it" to myself..it was distracting at least. :P The first word was "collage"..eaaasy lol. The first two rounds were pretty easy (especially since we did a lot of studying/practice), but the words just got insane after that. Two teams got out during the second round, misspelling "sayonara" and "mahatma." Our word during the third round was "tectonosphere," which wasn't too bad, but other ones like "caulicolous" and "addax"? Jeez haha. One team threw out the word "dactylology," which I had spelled correctly and I wished they had passed it to us lol (Liz had an I instead of a y, but I was pretty positive with my spelling, since "dactyl" is a root word I've seen before). On the next round we threw out two words that we definitely would have gotten wrong ("pneumatocele"?? Whut) and passed one to another team in the hope of getting an "easier" word, which amazingly worked, because the next word was "blastema"! I was so happy when they said I was right after spelling it, phew!! One team got out on "faja," which seemed simple to us lol (once they said it was a Spanish scarf, we knew it was a j instead of an h). Thenn came the next round (5th??), where only three of us were left (once the third round started, the teams dropped like flies), the Literacy Council, the library and the Co-Op Market (luckily we were all in the same area, so the lady with the microphone didn't have to keep walking all over the place lol). Our word was "gallinazo," which none of us knew how to spell and we got out on that one (it seems obvious now that I see it written down and I'm not under pressure lol). I'm just glad none of us misspoke or skipped a letter (at least one team did, ouch), or got out on a word we practiced on. Third place is still great though! Liz was especially happy..she'd never gotten over misspelling "dieffenbachia" lol. To win, a team has to spell two words in a row correctly (the judges mentioned one year two teams battled each other for TWO HOURS..yeah, I remember that and the judges we so not happy..they wanted to go home LOL). This time was like 5 or 10 minutes! The Co-Op Market won after spelling "acetylcholine" and "quokka." WOW. They are amazingly smart!! We battled them in 2015 when we got first place..they are smart and tough! They definitely earned that win lol. We were happy just to make it to third place lol. I'm not sure how much money we raised since I took today off, but I hope we did well. It was fun but I'm always glad to get it over with..stressful lol. I saw the Northern Lights when mom drove home too!

Here's a pic of us!

Mom (our awesome coach), me, Jackie, Liz. Yay us lol

( i don't feel like doing the picture meme now, but here's the pokemon update lol )