State champions!!

Once again Ashley is very involved in FFA this year. She is on a sales team with Cody Maddox, Jaden Gorden, and Justin Munn. They are given a product and some hypothetical situation and have to do the research on their product and convince the 'buyers' of why they need what they are selling. They went through the regular season and district meets and qualified to go to the state convention! They did pretty good at State but did not make the top 8 teams in sales. A couple of weeks before the state convention Ashley's Ag adviser told her that she was also going to enter Ashley and her friend Bobby in the F.A.R.M for kids category. I'm embarrassed to admit I still can't figure out what that stands for. But anyway, they had to put together a presentation and speech to present to a panel of judges regarding a great way to introduce the agriculture life to kids. Every year for the past several year the Ag class at PHS puts on what is called Griz's Farm which is basically a big petting zoo with all sorts of different stations the kids can go to to see hands on experiments...things like egg candling etc. Then all the local preschools and elementary schools come through on a field trip. Since her and Bobby Warwick have been very involved in that the last couple of years they used that as their project. And headed off to state convention. Shortly before their turn to go before the judges they realized their presentation which they had 'saved' on a thumb drive had vanished. So they had to quickly round up some more pictures and make a new powerpoint. Their adviser was becoming increasingly frustrated with them as they wouldn't do an official run through of their speech. They just kept saying, "we're going to wing it" Because of some other scheduling conflicts their adviser managed to get them bumped down on the schedule and buy them a couple of hours. She was soooo relieved to have been able to get them this extra time to practice and perfect their presentation. And apparently they used it very very wisely. When she (their adviser) called me that evening she informed me that Ashley & Bobby had used that extra time she got them to take a nap!! Good thing Ashley has an abundance of confidence and the gift of gab because somehow they pulled it out. I got a text later that day telling me they had made it to the top 8!!
The way it works at state convention is for each category, the top 8 teams get called up to the stage that night at the nightly session in the main stadium and winners are announced. We had just figured out that afternoon that we were able to watch these nightly sessions via webcam. Bob had pulled up the website on his computer that night and suddenly yelled at me to come see! He had easily picked out Ashley's partner Bobby on stage because he's a head taller than most and from there we could find Ashley right in front of him. With all those kids dressed in their official dress and the foggy imaging of a webcast it's kind of hard to pick out faces. So we tuned in just in time to see them start by calling out 8th place....7th place....6th place...we kept saying to each other "oh wow...they're going to make 5th!!...they're going to make 4th!!!!.....until suddenly, they were the only team left standing on stage!! The announcer said..."and representing Washington State at the National convention in Kentucky this fall...PROSSER!!" So of course we went crazy and the kids there went crazy and our phones started beeping as text messages started coming in from people who were at the convention. Unfortunately we found out later that the F.A.R.M for kids category is not one that they have at the National convention yet so they do not actually get to compete at the national level. While she was a little disappointed about that, she was still downright giddy about taking first place at a State competition. It was a very very crazy night....:)

Very proud of these two!!