State Geography Bee

After winning his school's geography bee, Cade had to take another geography test to qualify for the state competition. When he found out he qualified for state, we had to convince him to take the day off from school to attend the competition at Western Oregon University. I think he was glad he did it. The day actually started with a radio interview about the competition on KPNW news radio. The interview lasted nearly 10 minutes and Cade had the radio hosts laughing numerous times just being Cade. He struggled a bit with the hosts' geography questions but maybe it prepared him for the real thing later in the day! He did great! We then headed up to Monmouth where the 100 kids who qualified were separated into groups of 20. In his group of 20, each kid was asked nine questions. Cade did very well, answering the first five questions correctly, including a few really tough ones such as "What is the current name of the country off the coast of Senegal that was important in the slave trade in the 1500's?" I had NO clue. But Cade whipped out the answer, "Cape Verde". He ended up answering seven out of nine correctly which was not enough to be top two in his group and advance to the finals but he sure impressed me :). I so enjoyed just spending the day with him too; love that he's our boy! 

Here's Cade's radio interview:

Cade standing up to answer a question

Had to include this picture too as it shows just how little most of the contestants were. Cade was the tallest of his group and towered over many of the kids (contestants were mostly middle schoolers though there were some 5th graders as well) It was definitely a different group of kids than his usual sports-related extracurricular activities! 

 After the competition, Cade met up with Grandma to volunteer at the Habitat for Humanity garage sale (as part of his required community service for his school). Love these pictures I got of the two of them.