Once the rain stopped, most of the returned as mysteriously as they appeared. Only slime trails on our glass door gave evidence of their passage. The rest dried up quickly, leaving behind a disturbing number of worm corpses.
Meanwhile, today's main event was Connor's Mind-A-Mazes competition. His team--called Greninja (his friend is a big fan of Pokemon)--has spent the past few weeks building a Rube Goldberg-type invention. The goal is to have as many simple machines complete as many tasks as possible with only one starting point. The Greninja group had scored high enough at their school level to perform in today's district competition.
Unfortunately, the ramp failed to fall after Connor snipped the thread that was supposed to start it. This left the group with no points for 75% of their score. They were not the only team in that spot. One young lady had her entire project collapse just as she was getting it ready to go. Thankfully, all of the kids took their setbacks in stride.
The Greninja gang did well on the spontaneous task. They were given a series of materials that they needed to fashion into a working jump rope. Connor managed to jump rope twenty-two times before theirs fell apart.
In the end, he and his friends seemed eager to try again next year now that they have a better idea about how to tackle the problems presented to them.