We must have a wowee.

One of the first movies my family ever owned was An American Tail. I LOVE this movie. There is a part on it that always makes my sisters and I chuckle. A lady with a speech impediment is telling some dude that they need to throw a rally. But she can't say her r's or l's, so it sounds like "wowee."

Rich Lady: We need to have a wowee.
Drunk City Official: A wowee? What's a wowee?
Rich Lady: You know... a gathewing of peopoh... foh a weason.
Drunk City Official: Oh... you mean a rally.
Rich Lady: That's what I said. A wowee.

I actually found a clip of this conversation on YouTube. Classic. If you want to skip to the dialogue from above, it's at about one minute, 35 seconds:

We had an opportunity to attend a wowee a couple of weeks ago.

This is one of my bosses, Donevan:

He's a therapist. He actually calls me "Boss," which I think is kind of funny. Anyways, he works with a lot of teens and with a few tweens, as well, and a lot of his clients have had issues with being bullied in school. So he decided to have an anti-bullying campaign. He spoke at a few schools, and put posters up all over area schools that say, "No Bullying Zone." And then he sponsored a poster contest. The big winner would get a Nintendo Wii.

I told Dylan about the contest, and he was convinced that he was going to win the grand prize. I love those delusions of grandeur that kids have. It cracks me up. I forgot to have him work on it until the day it was due. I was at work that day, so I told my mom to have him make the poster.

She and Dylan talked a lot about it, and Dylan decided that maybe some kids bully because they are lonely and don't know how to make friends with people. I think there may be some truth to that. So Dylan came up with this:

Probably the dang cutest thing ever. In case you can't see his writing (or read it), it says, "If you don't push me down, then I will be your friend." I love it. I actually never saw the poster, because he took it to school that day.

My boss, Donevan, gathered the posters up from all of the schools - there were 1800 posters submitted!! And then he turned them directly in to the committee of judges, which was made up of superintendents from both school districts and also the mayor. I'm not sure who else.

I got a phone call the day before the wowee from Dylan's teacher, Miss V. She said that Dylan had won a prize, but she wasn't sure which one. And I promise that it wasn't rigged, even though Donevan is my boss. He never even looked at the posters. Just picked them up and handed them over to the judges.

So we went to the wowee at the public library the next day.

It turns out that Dylan won the first prize for Kindergarten boys in the entire city!! So he didn't win the grand prize - that went to a sixth grader, I think - but he was still thrilled:

He got a chance to shake hands with the mayor and some state representative that came over:

I'm so political, aren't I? "Some state representative..." I'm so clueless!!

The mayor spoke for a few minutes and talked about how he had been bullied in elementary school. I thought that was interesting. And Donevan told me that Dylan's poster was the mayor's utmost favorite. :)

Here's a picture of all of the winners:

And Dylan's certificate:

One of our local news channels actually interviewed Dylan:

They interviewed him for, like, five minutes, but it only showed a teeny blurb of him. He is on for a moment at one minute, two seconds:

Here's a little newspaper article about the event:

Dylan's teacher, Miss V, was there with her fiance:

After the wowee was officially over, Ben took some pictures of the kids playing around on the lawn area:

Micah was soooo tired and grumpy:

Wilson Rawls wrote Where the Red Fern Grows while he was living here in Idaho Falls in the fifties, so there is a statue showing the main character and his two dogs on the lawn at our public library:

Oh, and I forgot the most fun part - Dylan's prize. He won the movie, Kung Fu Panda, and also a certificate to Barnes and Noble. We actually went to Red Robin to celebrate after the wowee, and then straight to Barnes and Noble. Dylan got two books about dinosaurs.

This was really a good thing for Dylan. He needs as many positive strokes as he can get. He's soooooooooooooo difficult sometimes, so I try to shower him with affection and love and time whenever possible, to offset all the times he's in time-out and in trouble. :) He's extremely smart, and I think he gets bored easily. And that's when he is a troublemaker. If I was able to spend every second of the day one-on-one with him, he would be perfect. He's very well-behaved when he has constant attention. But if I'm making dinner or helping one of the other kids, he is usually naughty. So it was good for him to have something positive happen. I hope this will encourage him to continue exploring art. I did art while I was growing up and entered many contests like this, and it was a great part of my childhood and teen years. So we'll see what happens.