The Check's in the Mail

Some of our geography books.

It really is. In the mail, that is. The check. Along with our registration for the 2010 National Geographic Bee. Sent certified.

The folks at NatGeo are amazing. About 6,000,000 children compete in the Bee every year, from thousands of schools and homeschooling groups. The efforts to organize this thing must be phenomenal. I can't even imagine.

And do you know what those good folks did? They called me to make sure we were registering this year.

G studying with maps that H made.

Let me back up a bit. Austin Area Homeschoolers (actually yours truly, for the benefit of yours truly's oldest kid) has been the organizer for the Bee for homeschoolers in Austin for the last three years. NatGeo allows only one homeschooling Bee per city or town, probably to keep homeschoolers from having a bunch of small Bees in each city. So in Austin, we're it - at least we have been for the last three years.

This year, I needed to talk to someone at NatGeo before sending in our registration, and I hadn't gotten around to it yet. (I know ... shocker.) You can imagine my surprise when I picked up the phone and heard, "Hello, this is Erin from the National Geographic Bee."

It turns out that another homeschooling group in Austin had sent in their registration. I would have figured that it would be "First come, first served." I certainly wouldn't have expected that they would take the time to call.

I know it's not like one of them said, "Hey, here's a registration from a group in Austin that's not Austin Area Homeschoolers. Hmm. Maybe I should call Camille and see what's up." It's just that I think it's nice to have the personal touch occasionally, especially from such a huge organization. And it's awfully nice that they gave us the option of hosting, especially since they could have said, "You snooze, you lose."

Guess their mama raised them right.

G at last year's state bee.

So we're it once again. This year G wants to go all the way to Washington. Indeed, he wants to make Texas the first state to win the National Bee two years in a row. He has a tough road ahead of him, but I know he can do it if he continues to study the way he has been and has a smidgen of luck.

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If you liked this post, you might enjoy Geography Games and you might want to check out G's GeoBee study site, GeoBee Universe.