What we've accomplished so far ...

July 1 ... I found out about this competition from another homeschooling family's post on our facebook board. I asked the kids if they were interested, and they said they would think about it.

July 3 ... I talked to another homeschooling mom in our Lego group, and she said she'd talk to her kids about it too.

July 5 ... All kids are on board and getting excited about this project.

July 9 ... We're brainstorming team names, talking essay questions, and imagining lunar landscapes.

July 10 ... We have a blog! Our working title right now is Legomaniacs Lunar Adventures, which might end up changing.

July 12 ... We worked out many details today: took mountains of pictures, made final decision on team name (legomaniacs gone lunar) and designed our logo, worked on our blog, worked on essay questions, researched for and worked on what they would be doing for their individual spots in the the team video. Andrew worked hard on our video submission.

July 13 ... Brainstorm session today. We worked on our application questions. We also were able to see what Andrew has gotten done on the video. We're all glad he knows how to make movies. It's looking great. We just need to film each of the kid's segment to finish. We also worked more on our blog, finishing up our introduction post. Zach completed his video segment later in the day. Phillip did his video segment too, but the camera operator (me) messed it up by turning the camera sideways to get a better shot. He'll have to either be horizontal in our video, or he'll have to do it again. It's a shame because he did a great job on it.

July 14 ...We taped the three remaining spots for our movie today. Andrew filmed in a different location, so I  haven't seen his spot yet, but I can't wait. He's dressed up as a Mad Scientist, that's all I know for now. Grace and Phillip's segments went pretty well, no scripts for these two. They thought a little more about what they wanted to say, and they went for it. We got both on the second take, and they didn't go over their time limit. Yeah! That means little to no editing will be needed on Andrew's end of the project.

July 15 ...We transferred all video segments to Andrew this morning so he can put the finishing touches on our video. Grace and Phillip's segments are in a different format. Grrrrr. Now, to find out how to change format and make them work. Lots of research late into the night to figure out how to work this problem out. Finally, I found a blog from a cool, tech dude that answered our questions. We hope the files are converted correctly.

July 16 ... Success! We were able to transfer Grace and Phillip's segments, so Andrew can put them into our video entry. It looks terrific! We're excited!! We'll finish the rest of our application, and hopefully, submit our entry later on today.

Update: We've done it! A couple hours after we registered, we were listed on the Team page, with our own dot on the map and everthing. Phase 1 is complete for Legomaniacs Gone Lunar! We hope we'll be able to advance onto the next Phase, but, if not, we have learned a lot and had a lot of fun learning. :)