TTM Cafe

Thursday was the last day of the Final Tournament in TTM.  Bradley and Luke were both totally geared up to TTM it all day!  We had agreed to host a TTM Cafe at our house for Luke's class (basically for Mr. Flynn, but yeah :)).  It was funny how into it Mr. Flynn was.  He came all prepared with extension cords and pencil sharpener, scratch pads for the kids and pencils.  We had 13 kids from Luke's class show up.  They all worked really hard, talked a little and then Mr. Flynn put the kabosh on the talking and laughing and made sure they were all focusing :).  HAHA!!  He was hilarious.  Really cracking the whip :).  "Focus on the questions.... If you're not going to focus then there's no point in doing it!... Read the question through twice and then raise your hand if you don't get it.... NO GUESSING!...."  The list goes on... cracks me up still just thinking about it.  He really is a very devoted teacher.  And competitive :).  It's funny to see what this tournament did to him.  The kids all worked really hard for a couple hours.  I was surprised they didn't stay longer, but whatever, it was a good effort.  We fed them lots of food and goodies... turned out to be a really productive time as well- we got over 300 passoffs during our TTM cafe with just Luke's class.  Pretty awesome.  We got to sit and visit with Mr. Flynn for another hour or so.  That was cool.  He's very wise.  Old people are :).  Don't ask him how old he is... that was awkward.  I did get some pictures.  And all of Luke's siblings were so good during the whole home invasion!  I was so proud of them all!  They all helped clean up the house and then set it up for everyone.  Bradley worked hard on TTM the whole time.  Charity ran around helping kids and even hovered over a couple at Mr. Flynn's request, just to make sure they got the help when they needed it.  Kelly made our little chime at each passoff, ran around doing random odds and ends, helped with the food, AND made all our awesome signs.  Noah was the main scorekeeper, put tally marks on the board the WHOLE time (except when he went to the bathroom :) ).  Erika was so awesome to just keep herself busy :).  It was funny to see her in my peripheral rollerblading outside (alone even since "her only friend was gone"), playing with dolls, helping pass out candy, you name it.  She was busy.  Jack just kind of wandered around the whole time, but I thought it was super awesome that he was so easygoing and didn't need a whole lot.  It was pretty fun when he started screaming down the stairs, "MOOOOOM!!  COME WIPE MY BUMB!!!"  And sweet Molly slept through most of it!  Believe it or not!!  It was pretty quiet for how many kids were here.  Then just needed to be carried around the rest of the time.  She's such a good baby.  It was nice that everyone helped things to go so smoothly- it really couldn't have gone better.

You can see Luke poking up from downstairs.  I had purposely put him at the head of the kitchen table with my laptop so that he could be with his friends and be in all these pictures and just be part of the big group and being the social butterfly that he is, he went right back down to the old computer because he likes that he can push enter to submit his answer instead of having to click on it with the mouse- "it's way faster!"  Funny guy.  He definitely wasn't in this for the social aspect :).  

I think this is the kid whose mom promised him $100 if he got 100 passoffs!!  HOLY MOLY!!  We thought we were generous offering Luke a Dylan's shake for getting to 1,000 :).  Which was mostly just because Mr. Flynn wanted him to finish on top :).  Imagine if we gave him $1.00 per passoff- he'd have $1,300.00+!!!  Crazy.  

I think we were missing someone in this picture?

One with their biggest supporter and fan and motivator, and whip cracker...

Once he got past 1,000 he started getting questions he had seen before, which kind of blows my mind... so things got REALLY easy then.

What a fun experience for these kids though.  I really am glad they had the opportunity.  I'm glad we got to participate a little.