Chess Tournament 2012

Chess tournaments are long days without the pinewood derby before hand. So this was a really long Saturday. I'll give you a play by play of what happens at a Chess tournament. 

First the tournaments are held at a local school. The games are played in classrooms and the rest of time you are in the cafeteria. All day. We bring camping chairs to save our backs.

First thing you do is warm up by playing chess. Gets the mind thinking. Tyler's theory was the 4 move checkmate. It worked twice for him and he was thrilled.

Kaylyn just played awesome chess, only losing one game.

This is Thomas chilling in the camping chairs. Killing time between games. You typically play 5 games but these guys played 4 due to the derby.

This time we took us all. Sometimes we split up the family but we all wanted to be there.

Here's Kaylyn pondering what to do. There is a lot of that going on.

See, here is Thomas thinking about his game.

Katie took 5 days to pack so she would have stuff to do. I'll give the girl credit. She never fussed or complained. She entertained herself the whole day.

Part of our chess tradition is to call Grandma and Grandpa Bagley and let them know how the kids are doing. They love that.

This is the subtle symbol for I won. Always happy to see that.

This is just me and my guy passing the time away.

This was Katie by the end. I just love this shot.

Then after you finish all your games and done all you can do you have sit and wait. And that is the worst, especially for Kaylyn. For you see, she played in the championship game. Had she pulled out a win she would have won it all. But she lost and tied for eight. HUGE accomplishment for her but very bittersweet.

Again, she was the only girl to place. All of the kids can't wait till next time which will be in March. 

They love it.

At the end of this day we grabbed pizza for dinner and watched a movie. We were all exhausted.