These last few months, I've been working on our robot for my lego robotics team, Mindstorm Masters, in FLL (First Lego League). Our robot is tasked to move around a field with different missions on it, and complete those missions to earn points in a certain amount of time.

As I said in an earlier post, we competed in Nevada, and earned the Breakthrough award, as well as being the only team in Nevada to move onto Worlds.

Our Worlds competition was on June 24th to June 27th. It was originally going to be based in Greece, but it was moved to a virtual event. We ran 3 official runs, which turned out to be a high score of 245. In practice runs we could get up to 285 points, and some of the highest scoring teams could score up to 595 points, which is near the maximum number of points you could get.

There were 192 teams total, and 59 of them were from the US.

In the award ceremony today, they announced that we got 4th place in the entire world for our robot design. You can view the awards and scores here. (scroll down a bit to the robot design award or see the image below)

You can also watch the part of the ceremony where our award was announced here. (it will already be at the correct time in the video)

Savannah with Snowball

 

David Wally's Hot Springs Resort and Spa

 We were invited to spend a few days at the David Wally's 1862 Hot Springs Resort and Spa near Genoa. Scott and Lori had some timeshare points they wanted to use up, so they got a couple of rooms there and invited us to spend some time there with them. It was super nice to get out of town and super fun to just be with them. Our kids get along well with their kids, so it makes for a great time. 

This picture was just outside our room; I don't know the exact date for it, but it might be from the late 1800s or early 1900s. It shows the hot springs resort and the marshy area behind it. The short stone building in the middle of the picture is the only original building left, as a fire destroyed everything else back then. 

This is the view from Scott and Lori's room, we were right at the base of the Sierra Nevada mountains, it was beautiful. 

We went for a walk around the property. 

This is a waterway around the back of the hotel, the water is green and smells like sulphur, 

you can see the rings of movement in the water as bubbles come up from the bottom

fish are ok with swimming in this hot mineral water

on our walk, there were a few of these puddles where water bubbles up through the ground

you can't really see it here, but these little rocks were moving a lot cause water was pushing up through them. 

lizards everywhere

bird feeding babies, there were four babies in this nest

The resort offered some activities, one of them was Bingo one afternoon. 

with our prizes

a high chair at the Yogurt Beach in Gardnerville

near the hot mineral water pools

Tucker's hair standing up after being blown around in the hot springs.