Well, it is over. We went out to Salt Lake City for a speech and debate tournament last week. I am so tired now.

Monday was New Year’s Eve. We did not do anything really special, but we did work at church in the gym. We got home late.

New Year’s Day was incredibly quiet. I spent most of the day preparing to leave. Happy New Year! It is 2008!!!

Wednesday morning, about 6 a.m., we headed out to go meet our friends who live two hours away. After loading our stuff into their super-sweet Suburban and chatting for a little while, we headed out for Salt Lake City, Utah.

Our friends have the sweetest gadgets: a satellite radio, a GPS navigator system (we call it the “bossy lady,” since it has a female voice that gave us directions), and two in-car DVD players they had bought to add on to the car. We had fun watching movies such as Live Free, Die Hard and Spiderman 3. After hours in the car, we arrived at our destination, signed in at the tournament, and skipped the mandatory meeting because our friends’ baby was tired.

The next day, Thursday, 5 January, speech and debate began in earnest. I was so emotionally strung up that some of the smallest things made me so stressed. I love tournaments...

Our first debate, we were Affirmative against a SALT team. We had debated them at Yuletide, and we were Affirmative then too, but they were better prepared this time. We ended up winning that round.

The next round was much harder. Let me say right now that I really dislike going Negative this year. The Affirmative cases are amazing, and there is not much to say against them against a few logistical problems... Grr.

Anyway, the next round was against a Colorado team. We were Negative. Their case is good. They are good speakers. They are cool guys. We lost.

After that, we had speeches. I gave an extemporaneous speech on this years’ election being the most dishonest (or is it?—that was the question) of any. I did not do very well, but one of the judges gave me 2nd place, while another gave me 4th. Since I usually get 5th and Below, that was so nice!

My Persuasive, which I gave before extemp, was REALLY short. As in, it is usually 10:45, but it was 6 something minutes. Ouch. Esther also competed in Persuasive.

After this round of speech was over, we dove into another debate. This time we were Affirmative against a Forum team. Our judge was a college student who nodded vigorously and laughed when I made some of my points. I felt rather bad when she didn’t for the other team. We won that debate as well.

After that debate, we had another speech round. I did not compete this time, as there are two patterns to accommodate all the types of speech we have. Esther and Lydia did their OIs, Esther competed in DUO with Laura, and Lydia competed in Impromptu.

After speech, we had one final debate for the evening. We were Negative against another SALT team, and I think we did a rather poor job of arguing. They were good, too, and they won.

The next morning, I think debate started the day off. We ended up debating the friends we rode out with... Oy vey! We were Negative again, and we totally lost. But the judge liked me, apparently, and gave me first speaker over the stronger speaker, in my opinion, on the Affirmative team. Oh well.

We also debated another team (we were Affirmative) from The Forum. They were very much first-years, and I was quite impressed with how well they did. Nonetheless, we won (Affirmative is SO MUCH EASIER). Esther got the highest speaker points possible to get in that debate, and I was only 1 point behind her. That was cool.

I also had the chance to watch several friends’ OIs, Persuasives, DIs, DUOs, and OOs. Josh’s OI had me almost rolling on the floor with laughter. It was about his mom and all the lessons she has taught him. E-mail me if you know me well enough to have my e-mail, and I’ll tell you who it was so you can watch him next time he does it.

Yesterday we drove home, leaving at 8:30 a.m., and getting home at 11:30 p.m. We would have been home a little sooner (though not much—ALL HAIL DAD!!!) if it hadn’t been for our Camaro springing a rather large leak in the radiator hose. As we sat at the stoplight watching steam pour out from under the hood, I decided that maybe it would be wise to pull over and let Dad know what was going on. He came and rescued us. He’s amazing.

Today was the first day of school. I got up at 6:30 a.m. I’m exhausted.

Now I’ve updated. I wish I could be more complete and tell what amazing jobs my friends and sister did (they ROCKED!!!!!), but I have laundry awaiting me. Until later!