Float Building (or Who needs sleep, healthy food, or to run when we're 4 weeks from the marathon?)

Homecoming Week is also known as "Boy, I sure am glad I like being a Class Sponsor" week. After school each day this week, Kristen and I changed into jeans and headed over to one of our student's house for another 5-8 hours of float building. For those of you who don't remember high school/don't have the joys of helping out with building homecoming floats, here is a quick rundown of the "rules:"

1. You only have Monday-Thursday to build a float.
2. You have to come up with a trailer to build the float on (maximum size 8' x 10').
3. Students are supposed to provide all supplies, do all the planning and construction.

This year, our theme was Board Games and our class (the sophomores) chose Mousetrap. This seemed like a fun idea in the beginning, but what do we know? We're only in year 2 of float building. Also, working in a Class C district, we only have 75 sophomores, and at least half played sports and had practices/games for volleyball, soccer, football, and color guard each night. So we had about 6 girls and 1 boy who came regularly, plus a few boys from soccer and several girls from volleyball who would come later each evening.
MONDAY: Okay, we can do this. Sure, the trailer we have to build our float on is 4' x 6' but we're in a farming community, someone has to have a bigger trailer. Right? We can just focus on building the props tonight.
TUESDAY: Okay, it's 6 p.m. on day 2 of four days. Maybe we should really focus on finding a trailer. Cell phones are out all night and students are going through their contact lists calling anyone they know. Hurrah! Tyler's uncles show up with two pieces of plywood and a super sturdy frame. We have an 8' x 8' trailer now.
WEDNESDAY: Hmmm...no paint. So much for our plan to paint the game board on the plywood. Kristen has to run to Playmakers' Injury Clinic to have her hip checked out, so she picks up some paint at Home Depot. Unfortunately, she isn't able to get back until 7 p.m. or so. Luckily, host family finds old paint in the basement, a fun lime green & kids get to work on painting. Also, we realize that we have no idea how we are going to make things work...such as make the boot swing, how to make a football fly across the float through the goal posts, how the cage is going to drop.
THURSDAY: We are all running out of steam. I spend a lot of time today reminding the kids that the float needs to be finished tonight. Plus, soccer and volleyball have games tonight, so those kids aren't available at all (and they were our engineering minds who were working on the elaborate pulley systems to make everything move).

7 p.m. Should we be worried that the float is still empty?














8:30 p.m. We remember that we still don't really have any idea how the pulley system is supposed to work.














11:00 p.m. Volleyball players showed up around 9 p.m. (after winning the game) and are able to finish up the work for the exhausted first crew!














It was a fun week, even though it was exhausting. We had a fabulous group of students working and had a great time being silly with them all week. And I am working on Leah, hoping to have a new addition to our home soon...one of these adorable little babies:














Oh, and we got 2nd place again! Way to go Class of 2011!