And the Winner Is . . .

A big THANK-YOU to all of you who posted wonderfully nice comments on my contest post! It made my day (or week). It was so fun to hear from you all and even some people out there who I've never met. It's always nice to meet new friends.

Ok, so unless you're super anxious to look at the end of this to see if it's you or not, have fun reading my super creative way to pick a winner! Yes, I could have just put all of the names in a hat and picked one. BORING!!! I had to make it FUN for me! So with the genious help of my husband and son, we had a little fun on Saturday picking a winner! And yes, of course I documented it. At least the interesting parts.
Ok, so for your enjoyment, here it is:

Step 1, 2, & 3.My superly awesome husband who is a computer programmer, came up with a program to choose the contestants. It was a program which randomly picked people from a list. The first time we picked 12 people from the list (approx. 1/2 of the people), then we picked 6 from the 12, then 3 from the 6. There was the first boring, unforgiving part. But it was only fair to make it completely random, and most of you got many chances in the program to get picked. So I think it was fun for my husband to use his talent in my fun contest.

Step 4: Our 4 contestants were my son's awesome wind-up cars that he got for Christmas. But you might ask, why 4? Aren't there 3 contestants left? Well my husband came up with the 4th . . . the REDO Contestant! All 4 of these contestants were randomly assigned to the 4 cars (using the program).

Step 5: John winds up the cars all together, and Caleb gets to pick the winning car. But it can't just be the first one. No, it can't be that simple. He has to pick that car twice before it can be named the winner.

And yes, my son just had to pick the REDO contestant: TWICE!!!! (and just so you know the REDO contestant was a different car both times.)

Here's his mischievious smile that he started the contest from the very beginning again:

I thought this process would be quick, but no. Caleb wasn't sure what we wanted him to do once my husband wound up all the cars. We literally spent 5 minutes once, trying to convince him to get us a car. We of course couldn't show him how to do it, so it wasn't like we were favoring one contestant over the other. Eventually, he picked up a car. It was funny because I thought he'd tend to pick the same car or two each time, but every time it seemed as though he went for a different one.

After 2 Redos with different final contestants, he finally chose the winning car twice. He picked the car which I thought would be the least likely (due to the girly look of the car):

So the judge has chosen:

Drumrolls please . . . .

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Thanks again everyone, and thanks for letting me share some of my fun contest pictures!

I am now starting to book for this spring. March is already looking quite busy with some pre-wedding stuff and a wedding. So if you are looking for pictures in the springtime, please call or email me soon!