The church sanctuary looked absolutely stunning with the light streaming in through the stained-glass window.

This past weekend found us out-of-town yet again for the first NCFCA tournament of the year.  For me, it was a good four days spent with friends and family–even in spite of my personal failures throughout.

We stopped on the drive up to swing by Bluebell Creameries.  It’s fast becoming a tradition–who can resist Bluebell ice cream?  Certainly not a bunch of homeschoolers who practically fill the whole store.

Our club banner.  ARC is a pretty cool group of people.

Josh gets ready to compete in apologetics, a speech event in which students explain their personal faith through a number of pre-written questions.

Grace and Christina, two of the wonderful people I got to spend time with.

This, my friends, is a wonderful flow of one of my debate rounds.  Please understand that it isn’t supposed to look this way.  There ought to be four, neat columns of notes, succintly summarizing the arguments in the round.  Instead…well, you see what I ended up with.

Brian and Toni, debating in outrounds.

The Pig.  As the unofficial ARC mascot, he bears a very important message: Don’t take yourself too seriously.

I love these people.

…and these people…

…and yes, even this person!

Excitement and congratulations for those breaking to the next round.

Saturday night, after the awards ceremony, a group of us gathered at IHOP to have fun and look over ballots from the tournament.  Festivities continued until nearly 2:00 AM, after which we straggled back to our respective places of rest in order to grab a few hours of sleep before heading home the next day.

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