// We ended today in 4th place. Watching the standings online is nerve racking! We are bouncing all over the place between first and tenth! Our across the way neighbors are in first, which is nice to know that we share the block with a great house, but it also makes the competition harder -- being able to see their house doing better than ours. We had public tours today. Around 3pm, 2 hours before we were closing, we had sent 2054 people through the house. That is a lot of people! I didn't get a chance to get the end count, but still! 2000+ people in 5 hours, wowzers.

After tours we had our casual friends and family thank you reception in the hotel. It went extremely well. I ordered WAY too much food though. Looks like we will be having Indian appetizers for the next couple lunches. Finally we get a chance to relax! It was amazing to be chatting with everyone and their parents in a laid back environment. We ended the night sucking the helium from the decorative balloons... it is amazing how entertaining that is, or how tired we are so anything is entertaining.

Remember to vote for us in People's Choice! Text HOUSE31 to 99503! Last I heard we were in second!!! Vote now please!!!

// Today was much less hectic than the past days, or at least it felt that way to me. It was definitely hot out! We all got our fair share of solar power, and hopefully our house did too. Communications, architecture and market viability had their judged tours today. They went really well, so I heard. Then we had public tours. We did an excellent job with crowd control and flow through the house. We always had a line, but it was never slow moving. There were more contests, like every day which Tim and Ross slaved away on.

Tori and I had our first dinner party. We hosted 2 people from our 3 surrounding neighbors, while 6 of our members went to their houses. It was a lot of fun. Our menu was a raw vegan diet. Everyone expressed that they liked the food a lot, which was really great to hear because it was a large risk we were taking by serving something that typically has a bad stereotype. They loved our house and wanted to continue hanging out in it. Sadly we couldn't because of the contests and competition rules. We played Zoo, a silly ice breaker (that I LOVE, but not as much as fruit basket) and Catch Phrase. It was a lot of fun, and we were never short of conversation. I really hope that we make some great companions from our opponents, even though we are competing against each other.

// So Tori and I just finished our Market Viability tour. It covers the three topics of buildability, marketability, and livability. I believe we hit each one rather well, but our biggest strength was definitely livability. The reason for this is that our house was built by undergraduate students, so that means it must be easy for a general contractor to build, but we lacked a strong construction management background to address it deeper. However, we're confident that our CD set shows how to build our home.

We hope we score well, but either way, we have Victori(a)! That was a play on words because victory is in tori's name, and she was an awesome partner with me on this.

// WE ARE CURRENTLY IN FIRST PLACE! To stay up with all the scoring, look at scoring .

Also, please vote for the people's choice house!
text "house31" to 99503

// Terrific start to the competition!!! I can't believe, well honestly I can, but I am just so please with how well we are doing! Our success isn’t solely in the competition aspect either; it is just how amazing our team is. We can really function in any setting! Whether is be at 4 in the morning packing up the house or in the hot sun just waiting for instructions, we shine. Today was a later start than we have been used to, except for Tim and Ross who had to start the contests at the crack of dawn. The rest of us headed over to the site between 9 and 11 in the morning. We had a decathlete picture (with our house in the background!) and then the opening ceremonies started! It was a fantastic motivation and congratulatory ceremony. Our very own Allison was chosen from the other decathletes to represent everyone with her speech! (Another congratulations for that wonderful talk).

Then the ribbon was cut to indicate the official beginning of the competition, during this time all the speakers chose, that is right CHOSE, to sit on our patio furniture while they waited. It was just a small gesture that was a HUGE honor. Then, Secretary Chu chose to have his 60 Minutes interview in our house! Out of the 20 beautiful houses on the mall, he chose ours!
Most people walking by our house express extreme satisfaction in our house (love is a common description). I find it amazing how much praise the house gets. It is so rewarding to know that after pouring our lives into this house, we get this much appreciation.
The rest of the day was VIP tours of the house. We realized that our original tour system wasn't the best method, especially because it is so easy to talk about our house for hours on end. So it was nice to have this day to figure out we were going too slowly before the huge crowds come around. SCU alums stopped by for a tour as well as the CCA Trustees. It is so nice to show our baby off. I can't wait for everyone else to see it during the public tours.

We are finally able to blog before midnight, so I am going to take advantage of the extra time and catch up on my homework... yes, we still have to do all our homework while we are in DC. Please keep your digits crossed for us! As of right now we are in 3rd place!!