National Skills usa,

This week (June 22ND-27Th) I (Neal) and My mom and dad had the opportunity to go to Kansas city to participate in National Skills USA. I went for cabinetmaking, The competition goes like this, at 7:30 AM they took all the contestants up to the competition area and showed us all what was at our work stations and showed us how to run some of the newer machines there, and they also had a finished cabinet of what we were suppose to build. They let us look at that for maybe 5-10 minutes and then gave us some plans and we went to our work stations and from the plans we had to fill out a "cut list" (which is a list of every single part and we had to fill in how long and wide and thick and how much of every part there is on this cabinet) Then once we got that all filled out we turned it in and we went to work. All together this contest was about 8 hours long, with a 30 minute lunch break, and it took about 30 minutes to fill out the cut list. So really every competitor had 7 hours to build and extremely difficult cabinet. But once it was all over I felt really good on how I did and I figured that I would place fairly high. Well there was 43 competitors and I placed 18TH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Dang good for being at Nationals. It was an amazing experience to be there and be around some of the best skilled people in high school and talk to them and to meet alot of newe people. I am very grateful for mom and dad for the money they spent for us to be able to go there. And for them going too. It was really fun to be with them and I have wanted them to see me work ever since my first year of skills usa, so finally they were able to. So here are some pictures of the whole thing.