I think that you can tell by the picture that Austin’s team lost on this particular night.

Mary Lou maintains her monthly dinner with high school friends Marie, Denise, Nancy, Kathy, and Mary.

The Collins family visits De Soto Caverns near Birmingham, Alabama

Stephanie and Julia ham it up

Austin started playing competitive chess this year, and took a four month unbeaten streak all the way to the state championship where he was 2 & 3. We started playing chess when Austin was 4 years old, and we’ve played thousands of games, studied strategy books, tips from the web, etc. We’ve even download all of the Kasparov/Deep Blue matches and replayed them repeatedly on our chess board. We also play online against other players from around the world. (http://www.instantchess.com/ ) The years of effort have started paying off – for Austin. An unfortunate consequence of his success is that I am now beaten consistently by an 11 year old kid. My only consolation is that Austin was tested by a grandmaster where he called 49 out of 50 moves correctly – which places him at grandmaster level. That makes me feel a little better.

Austin with team trophy for chess