This post is long in the coming... actually should have been written at the end of November. Brief recap about Growing Pains and how it took home some awesome awards in the BYU Mobile App Competition. We had big plans for Growing Pains, but at the time of the submission deadline we were probably only 40-50% done with our first iteration feature set. I honestly was not expecting to take home much from the competition. The one award I was fairly confident about was the best Ruby on Rails backend, mostly because I was guessing that we were one of the only RoR backends.

My sister Kandace and I were there and were pumped when they announced Growing Pains as a top-16 semifinalist out of 25, with a guaranteed $250 cash prize. Dru couldn't make it because it was during the day and she would have to miss work. All 16 semi-finalists gave a 2 minute demo and presentation on their app, which was exciting for me. I've never made a pitch to 500 people before.

Then the awards... Kandace and I were super stoked when the first award they gave out -- BizVector award for business potential from MokiNetworks -- was given to Growing Pains! $100 gift card. Sweet! Next up the finalists. Again, the very first app they announced (which just added to the excitement and surprise) was Growing Pains, 5th place with a $1000 cash prize. Other top apps included a couple games and 2 business productivity apps, with a top cash prize of $3000. We also won the Ruby on Rails API award, which was a iPad for each team member. In total we came away with $2100 in awards and prize money, plus a heavy dose of validation and encouragement about our idea and the direction Growing Pains was heading.

We've continued working on Growing Pains and recently started beta testing with couple family members. If you're interested in giving us some pre-release feedback - let me know!