Surprise

I don't know if I've talked much about this, but that picture that I took of Janelle and Nicole dancing in the sunset, you know, this one:



Well, my mom really liked it and she told me I should enter it in some photo contests, so I did. I like the picture and all, but my mom was the one who was really gung-ho about the whole thing, so when I heard back from two of the places, she like flipped out. Apparently my photo was published in two different books of amateur photography. One of the companies made you buy the book for like $65 in order to advance to the next level of the competition, but the other company sent me a letter that said I was a semi-finalist. So, you know, I was pretty excited, but my mom was extatic. So I've had to sign a couple of things saying it's my original work and all and the picture has been copyrighted in my name and I had it licsensed so if the company sold a product off their website with my photo on, I would get royalty payments. I had just been getting paperwork from this place, but then today, they sent me this manilla envelope and I could feel something inside. I opened it and there was this silver coin that said "Winner" and had the contest name and stuff on it. So I opened the letter with it and found out that I won first prize. Now, this is not grand prize, it's first prize. So like, there is one grand prize winner that wins money, then there are 40 first prize winners like me who get the coin and 80 second prize winners and I don't know what they get. So I was soooo surprised. I really didn't expect to make it to the semi-finals, let alone have my photo be one of 40 chosen out of thousands to win first prize. Kinda weird. I called my mom and she freaked out. It was pretty funny. So yeah, I was pretty happy. I kinda wish I would have gotten in on some of that money, but it's still just cool that I won. In a couple of weeks my photo will be on their website, but right now they just have last year's winners.
Well, I'm off to Ruth's for a Mary Kay party!