We have made it a K-Botics tradition to participate as a team in the KCVI Relay For Life event held each spring. This year the KCVI event raised over $17000 for the Canadian Cancer Society! 
Our team, made up of students, teachers and mentors, had a campsite in one of the basement hallways, and we needed to mark our territory by making a banner.
To pay tribute to our most recent all-night adventure we called our team K-Botics: LAMBeth 2.0 (For those of you regular blog readers, you’ll remember that it was in Lambeth that our bus broke down on the side of the road headed for St. Louis)
All participants were given T-Shirts….but after a few moments it was evident that there was a sleeve monster on the loose! 
After the opening ceremonies, where we heard from cancer survivors and family and friends, we did a lap of the luminary track with our teams. The luminaries are all dedicated to family and friends who are fighting the battle with cancer, or in honour of those who have passed away. 
Some people lingered to walk around the luminary track, which was open as a quiet space all night long, while others participated in some more lively events.
There was a dance competition! We did a pretty good job showing everyone our dance moves.
There was a pizza party for dinner…
…followed by a coffee house, where musicians showed off their talents….
…and there was a newspaper fashion show at 2:30AM! 
It has become a tradition for our team to put on a demonstration as well. This year it took a bit of preparation though. We needed to clean all the carpet which had been in the Transformix Warehouse since build season ended. We needed to vacuum the top AND bottom side of each roll. Thanks to the custodial staff for providing us an excellent vacuum!
We also had to ensure that the electrical system and programming were working on our Logomotion robot. Our Rebound Rumble robot is currently in a crate in Toledo Ohio, headed to Kingston sometime this week.
With the music pumping, our robot showed off for the crowds. It was great to see so many people line up to get their hands on the controls. We’re always looking for new members to join our team next year! Who knows, maybe some of these people will join our ranks.
As the night wore on, some of us took time out for a nap.
…or a quiet moment to read a book.
When the morning came, we were feeling a bit exhausted, but happy. We are glad to do our part to raise money for the Canadian Cancer Society.
In fact, our team raised the 4th highest amount! For this, we got prizes.
Thanks to Sam for being the team captain this year.
It was great that so many parents came to see us off at the bus. We know that parents will be cheering us on, and watching the 
Our precious cargo got seats on the bus with us.
We had a pretty great bus ride. There was a lot of music and dancing….and for a brief time, there was a nerf-gun war….We had many games of MASH, and giggles about what everyone’s future life would be like.
One of our K-Bots has forgotten their hat. Hats are an important part of our uniform. When hats are lost or misplaced or forgotten, they are often replaced…but with hot pink accents. This hat is starting off with a beard! It will grow over the course of the tournament.
When we arrived at our hotel, many of us took time to relax. Parents and teachers will be glad to know that some of us got right to work on homework and assignments.
Others took advantage of the time to catch up on sleep.
Our chairman’s team has been working very hard, and takes all opportunities to practice their presentation.
We are looking forward to sharing the story of our team with the judges at Waterloo. To help pass our message along, we created a little book. Time was tight, so the book got shipped to our hotel, and we got our first look at it today!
After the pit crew loaded our robot and equipment into the venue, we gathered at East Side Mario’s for our dinner. Our team is so big we take up 2 huge tables!
We had a delicious dinner, and enjoyed the time together. Our big purple family meal times have really bonded us together this build season.
This evening’s business included a strategic meeting for our pit crew. There are many tasks to complete before noon tomorrow. We need to re-attach all of our components that we removed to work on between competitions, and then start calibrating our robot for this event.
With a list of priorities firmly established, everyone headed to bed. Lights were out by 10:30PM. It’s the start of a busy few days, with early wake up calls for breakfast bagel parties!
The hallways were buzzing with excited teams, coaches and parents. For some teams this was their very first FLL competition!
…and then we danced…
While the party was going on, there were some of us hard at work packing up tools and working on rewiring our electrical box.
Before heading home we voted on our robot’s name. There were so many very creative names that had been suggested online, and several that had evolved from the craziness of our group.
It’s hard to believe that day 2 of build season was as fun as kick off! After dreaming of robot designs all night, we had lots of ideas to start sketching out and prototyping. We appreciate the help of our mentors every step of the way!
Along with the robot and minibot we are focusing on building parts of the field. We’ve got lots of PVC pipe and wood that we’re cutting up to make the scoring rack. We also unrolled the carpet that we got last year at GTR. We’re hoping to get a warehouse space to set up a partial field later this season.
We are mentoring team 3710, the Cyber Falcons, and are starting to make a series of videos to give them helpful hints throughout build season. It’s also a great way to show everyone just how much fun we are having. At K-Botics we encourage public displays of fun!
Today we filmed many topics, and will edit them into some short videos over the next few days. We had a lot of fun making our dance videos! 
We had hoped that our tournament would be a qualifying regional tournament, but unfortunately there weren’t enough teams signed up by the deadline, so we changed it into a practice tournament. A few other teams and community groups decided to join in with the Lego fun. To add to the fun of the day, we were glad to have Karthik as our M.C. for the tournament. He helped get people enthusiastic, and informed about the FLL game Body Forward.
In the morning the Discobots, Legendary Lego Legion, Vanier Vipers and the 
Helped by mentors from Queen’s University, and K-Botics, these inexperienced teams learned how to build and program a robot to accomplish several missions. One of these rookie teams, the 
During the day we had demonstrations of our robot from the Breakaway challenge last year. It’s always neat to watch people’s faces when we open up the electrical box.
We were also glad that the local 
Throughout the day, we focused on creating an enthusiastic, fun, welcoming and spirited environment. A big part of this spirit involved the presence of our KCVI mascot, the blue bear.
Anika made friends with the blue bear at the FLL practice tournament that we hosted last year, and it appears that they are still good friends now!
They danced together when the music played….and they weren’t the only ones dancing!
Our dance lessons helped us get EVERYONE involved…even Vanier’s Viper!
The field table competition happened in the afternoon. Round robin play was followed by the playoff rounds. Each team should be proud of what they accomplished.
When we step back and reflect on the day, we are proud of what was accomplished by our team, and by the FLL and Jr. FLL teams. We wish them all well on their upcoming regional qualifying tournaments, and hope that our day helped provide important feedback and useful practice on the field tables.
Congratulations to all of the teams! We look forward to seeing you all again next year.
We also received a package for our beta-testers. It’s so exciting to be able to start our testing with our new hardware.
Our team of keen programmers are learning lots every day! We have many new members who are excited to see the guts of last year’s robot, and learn how the programming makes it move and operate.
Our builders were hard at work refining our prototypes as well.
It’s nice to get the chance to show off the product of our many hours of work during build season.
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award brainstorming breakaway build season bumpers CAD Chairman's Report communication community competition construction Cyber Falcons dance demo design electrical families field field trip First Robotics FLL FRC fundraising GTR kick off Logomotion Machining media mentors New York City Regional organization pre-season challenge programming prototype Queen's University rebound rumble safety scouting sponsors team building testing thank you Transformix video WAFFLES
