Hey Ohio FFA! I hope everyone is getting excited for state convention. It's only 6 weeks away! The officers and I have been working very hard trying to get everything together and ready for our biggest event of the year. It's pretty exciting... :-)

First off, I would like to give a thank you to Ashton, Cody, and Zach. They all made the final four in Extemp. public speaking with me a couple weeks ago, and we definitely had a lot, and I mean a lot, of time to talk and get to know each other through the hours of waiting for results! Thanks for making the day more interesting!

Last week's Northridge Leadership Night was a good one to end the year with. Erin and Leslie, along with some helpers, led the whole group in a game of "people to people," it was a pretty good time. It was also fun to have some of my "Amanda people" there. Even though Ray and David gave away the catch to the straw challenge...

And finally, I had my first banquet speech last Wednesday at Centerburg. Mr. Swendal and Caitlin, the chapter reporter, made me feel right at home. Their slideshow was really cool. They showed baby pictures of all the seniors in ag, a lot of parents were shedding some tears! And it was pretty exciting to see their new officer results, Caitlin is the new president!

Well, I'll talk to you later, and see you at convention!

The month of January has been really fun, and really cold! The state officers and I came together a couple days before the Made for Excellence conference to work on our banquet speeches. Ohio is going to hear some awesome speeches as banquets begin this spring!
MFE and ALD was a great time this year. Thanks to Victor, Patrick, and Aaron for some good times at our table. I learned the Superman dance that night, that was quite an experience!
Allen Schmitz and I visited Teays Valley together last week. We had some mass chaos in their amazing shop when we made everyone have a peanut-butter/ spray can cheese eating challenge! We had a pretty good time that day. Stay warm Ohio FFA!

Well I hope everyone had a very merry Christmas and will have a great new year! The month of December is always so crazy! I have visited the Logan Elm FFA and given a couple of greenhand speeches. Logan Elm was a fun visit, even though it poured rain all day long! Mr. Bower called it "liquid sunshine." Some of the freshmen had their first taste of public speaking as Mrs. Metzger had everyone in the class share their FFA collages. I was pretty impressed! And while on the subject of Logan Elm, I want to thank Natasha for showing me around and basically being my host for the day!

My greenhand speeches at Amanda-Clearcreek and Liberty Union were pretty good too. I had a great time visiting with all of the Liberty Union FFA members. We're getting to know each other pretty well by now! Thanks to the officers for the great stories after everyone left! And well I obviously already knew the A-C FFA members, since that is where I go to school, but I still want to give a big thank you for their time and attention to me. We had an awesome peanut butter face competition at our greenhand ceremony that night. The winning group had more than 150 marshmellows stuck to his peanut butter covered face! Ah great times, great times...

Last Friday I had a chapter visit at Southern High School in Racine (It is a little town along the Ohio River in Meigs County, if you don't know). The students there were awesome! I got a little lost in the morning, but when I arrived Ms. Yates had already sent Dustyn to come find me and walk me to the ag. room. It was pretty cool to get to know so many people so well because I saw most of the students two or three times that day. Whitney, chapter president, stayed in the room with me most of the day; she deserves some credit because she is the only girl on the officer team! By the end of the day, Eric, another officer, became the human table leader. We had some ultimate table competitions. They got pretty intense...
So all in all, I had a pretty great day. Everyone told me lots of stories and we had some good times. I told everyone at the family Thanksgiving dinner yesterday about life in Racine!

How much can happen in seven (and a half) days for the National FFA Convention...
Well it was quite a week, but I'll give the short version!

Sunday: Justin Stiers, Anna Hall, Kelly Shaw, and I drove to Indy; I only spent about five and a half hours in a car that day. We only got lost a couple times, which is a record for us!
Monday: I worked at Second Helpings, a place that creates meals for the needy, for the National Day of Service. I cleaned the cleaning supplies and emptied rice packets into a big trash barrel (it was clean, don't worry) with some state officers from California. I then was filmed giving FFA facts for a local PBS station along with Dustin Homan and the Montana vice-president. Let's just say I'm glad nobody in Ohio gets that station!
Tuesday: Many delegate meetings, debating, more delegate meetings and more debating... Lots of fun though ;-)
Wednesday and Thursday: I participated in the National Ag. Communications CDE. It was intense! I ate a lot of new seafood Thursday night; it took some convincing, but I did try a mussel. I also saw a slick session and went to the Buckeye Bash, which was a great time as always!
Friday: Lots of awesome sessions where I heard amazing speakers like Chad Hymes and Henry Winkler. I also learned that my ag. comm. placed 3rd in the nation, and I placed 10th individually! It was a good day.
Saturday: I met a lot of Ohioans at the American Degree session early that morning (I would actually say extremely early), good times though, some of the best all week. We saw a great closing session and left for Ohio. After dropping off Kelly, Anna, Justin and I became trapped in a traffic jam on the Cincinnati outer belt for almost an hour and a half!
Sunday: Therefore, we stayed at Anna's house and Justin and I completed our journey home Sunday morning.