Competition

I am so proud of my son, Jacob. For three weeks he worked very hard helping his team compete at Lego Land with their robot. Pretty cool looking, huh? They designed it to work like a forklift and they were able to do well enough that they took the Overall Robot Award at Lego Land.

But the thing that impresses me most about Jacob is his character. Jacob is kind of a back seat type of child. He is easy going and likes to have fun but he is very aware of other's feelings and wants to make sure that everyone feels important.

He was not able to participate as much as he would have liked on the programming part of this competition but he was very grateful to the other two team members who spent numerous hours working on it.

One of the questions the team was asked was what does Gracious Professionalism mean to you? Gracious Professionalism is a term that is used in FLL (First Lego League) all the time. I love the way the competition works and wish that every child had an opportunity to be involved in it.

When Jacob got in the car he told me all about the questions they were asked and here is his answer to what Gracious Professionalism means to him.

"Well, you know how when someone says you are a good sport that means you need to act nice whether you win or lose. But when you are a good sport you really want your team to win. With Gracious Professionalism you want others to win and are even willing to help them achieve that goal. And as long as you did your best and learned along the way it doesn't matter if you win."

I love that kid. I wish everyone could have a Jacob. He is the most kind hearted person I know.