Patty Johnson's Blog

After the Fun Fair we stopped at Tess Twist for some food. Then we went to the big playground for some more fun. She really loves the slides, sandbox, and climbing all over the place. She even found some little girls to play with for a while. VIDEO: Adam and Lily on the Slide HERE
VIDEO: Adam pushing Lily on the swings HERE

We had fun at the Family Fun Fair this year. Lily didn't want to spend any time in the gym where most of the activities were because Ronald McDonald was "too loud" So, we spent most of the time outside. She loved feeding hay to the horse. Then, they had this massive pinata that they had hanging from a big crane. It didn't break right away so they pulled a little cord and some of the candy came spilling out. All the kids ran for the candy and then the rest of the candy fell on top of all the kids.

Trivia was really great this year. We got our second 500 pointer ever! The Question was "'What is the name of the comic strip that claims the following, 'the comic strip that doesn't pull any punches'" which was in our notes as Bludgeon Funnies! They actually asked the same question 31 hours later, but that time it was only worth 15 points. So, I guess it was really a 515 point question!Overall things went pretty smoothly this year. There were a few questions and snippets we should have gotten but didn't because of this and that.
We had to "One" a bunch of people this year, including my brother Steve a record 6 times! {Note: You are "One'd" if you are caught sleeping during Trivia. Then someone will go next to you and stick up 1 finger. The number of people doing this depends on how many times you have been one'd so far in the contest.} Below are my two favorites this year. See all our One'd picts HERE
I definitely had alot of fun this year! I started to lose my voice because of all the laughter and fun. (I actually woke up Monday morning with no voice so I had to whisper and wear a notebook around my neck and write down what I wanted to say!)
A couple moments that cause much laughter were
1) Me calling in Little Richard's translation in the Geico Commercial about Thanksgiving [Video Here]
2) Us doing the chant for the Pepto Bismol Commerical [Video Here]
3) Aaron & Adam's water chugging race [Video Here]
4) Us singing the non-sensical part of "Get a Job" [Video Here]
5) Random Giggly Moments [Video Here]
After we got a call from Oz, most of us went to the party at Joe's for a little while before going to 90fm. Lily fell asleep on the way there and stayed asleep the whole time we were at the bar! This year we were very excited to come in 6th place out of 436 teams. I was actually nervous that we didn't make top ten because you never know what's going to happen since they don't tell you any of the placings between 6pm Sunday and the end of the contest. So, while they were naming off each team in order we were very excited that we were higher and higher!

Trivia weekend really started off with a bang this year.  We worked super hard on our parade float only to see it come crashing down on Patch Street on the way to the parade.  I was riding in Bill's car, directly behind Adam's dads truck which was pulling the trailer so I got to see (a little too closely) the backboard with our sweet spinning roulette wheel come flying off the back of the trailer.  His dad quickly turned around and everyone in our caravan to the parade jumped out of their cars to lift the backboard back on the trailer so we could make to the parade starting site and get it fixed.
They drove way too fast though so one of our sideboards came flying off next.  I jumped out of Bill's car to get it and threw it in Steve's van (while being yelled at by random people to get out of the road) Luckily, Adam's dad really great at fixing stuff so he had wire in the back of his truck and somehow quickly wired the float back together.  My dad showed up with power tools so we could get the sideboard back on too.  The rest of us worked together and got our float back together. Our music worked really good for the first time ever on the BIG speakers. The parade went really well, even though I was sore for days from throwing poker chips (we had over 4,000 poker chips and two big buckets of candy)  We ended up taking 3rd place in the parade, winning a inflatable Nicholas C. Point and a bunch of Portessi Pizzas. Other Parade winners were in 1st place TFC 27 and in 2nd Place Freak Gordon

We were very popular this year in the media this year. The Saturday before trivia we were interviewed by a new reporter from the Stevens Point Journal that really didn't know anything about trivia. I think he thought we were crazy and intriguing because he played a little trivia with us and turned the one article into a 3-part article about trivia and we were talked about and/or shown in each part. Also, that Saturday we were interviewed by a member of the trivia team, Festivus for the rest of us, who was doing a report for college. Tuesday during Trivia week we were interviewed by USA Today!!! It's really always interesting and fun talking to people who don't know much about trivia. (See all the articles about us on our Dad's Computers Media Page)

This year we got in line for Trivia registration at about 11pm on Sunday night (For those of you that don't know, registration begins on Monday at 3pm) Cool Joe had his sweet huge tent already set up for us which was super cool. The next person came in line a few hours later was a guy from BASP who we called "Guy" (until we found out his real name was RJ). We hung out outside for a while until some of us got tired. I really didn't get any sleep because I was cold and pretty uncomfortable. I stayed in the tent until about 7:30am when I could hear students roaming to class so I knew that the Comm building was open so I could use the bathroom. Then, I hung out with Jarett and the two Matt's who were after RJ in line and they stayed up all night outside talking. The day turned out to be very beautiful once the sun finally hit us. Adam and Lily came to join us at about noon. Lily had fun blowing bubbles, coloring with chalk, and flirting with a little boy named Tyler. We also had a nice game of Duct-tape baseball where we took rolled up duct tape put some rubber bands over it and used our Yaz bat. It was really fun. After registration was over and we got all the picts out to our team members, I was super windburned, sunburned and super tired so I took a nice nap. VIDEO: Lily being Eric's Shadow HERE

The trivia movie was good this year, at least much better than last years! The weather was halfway decent too which was nice for the long wait in line. Some of us went both nights to get better notes. Here are the group shots from Friday and Saturday nights

This was the coldest year for Easter I can remember. Puting winter boots on Lily for Easter egg hunts was a little weird. At Piffner it was the worst and at one point she had a little frozen tear on her face. The church egghunt was better because we got to be inside until the actual hunt took place. Lily loves playing with her plastic easter eggs!

Tonight we painted the first coat of black on the sideboards for the parade float. Then, we quickly got ready and went to Wiza's party at Joe's bar and waited to see if he won or not. Adam and Lily went home for some father-daughter bonding while the rest of us hit the bar. The party was cool and it was definitely nice being out for a change. Wiza ended up losing to Halverson but it was still a fun party. Here's a picture that Madison took of me, Vanessa and Aaron.