This one’s dedicated to all the friends and family members who helped my daughter and her team go to their Destination Imagination Global Tournament in Knoxville, Tennessee last week. It was a thoroughly exhausting, thoroughly wonderful week. They had the time of their lives! THANK YOU!

There were so many things my daughter got to try for the first time last week, like the human hamster ball:

Bungee banana basketball…(the expression on her face)!

Organized thuggery:

NASA was there…

I got to play astronaut too!

Buzz Aldrin was the keynote speaker at the Opening Ceremony!

Over 17,000 people from 17 different countries all over the world came to Knoxville for the tournament.

Pin-trading was serious business:

Registering for the Instant Challenge:

The kids were cheered on as they went to do their instant challenge:

I got to hang out with these lovely mamas all week. We waited in the wings for our little teamsters…

They were ready to cut loose after their challenge:

And then it was on to the Duct Tape Ball! My girl only managed to put a few pieces of duct tape on the shirt she was wearing…(UNDER the fleece)!, but her teammates were far more enterprising:

There were some really elaborate duct tape costumes at the ball:

The next day the kids performed their main challenge. They had worked on the “Creature Feature” technical challenge for which they had to build a creature that performed actions, and to present a story featuring the creature as a character.

Once their challenge was done, they could relax!

On our last night in Knoxville, we went to dinner in Market Square, where we saw this statue:

The girls wanted to say thank you…

On Saturday morning before hitting the road for the six hour drive back to Charlottesville, the kids had one more woman to thank – their wonderful, wonderful, out of all whooping DI coach:

What a week! Goodbye, Knoxville! Hope to see you again…