Playing Catch Up: Pine Wood Derby

Our ward had a pine wood derby social back in February. I wasn't super excited about going to it, but Andy actually wanted to go. He wanted to make a derby car. Go figure. You can take the boy out of scouts, but you can't take the scout out of the boy. Andy started doing all kinds of research on derby cars. I didn't even know you could research derby cars. Our friends the Andersons also wanted to make a derby car (or maybe we peer pressured them) so we decided to make it a party. We had dinner and then the boys were off to cut, sand, drill, whatever there little wood cars. 

 They then let our cute little girls paint and decorate them. 

We didn't trust Alice to not get paint on her shirt. 

 See that spot of paint on Alice's nose. She didn't do that, it was Kristine. And Alice thought it was awesome. Kristine ended up being a wealth of information when it came to derby cars. I guess she was actually paying attention when her brothers where in scouts.

 After the cars dried Andy and Derick thought it would be a good idea to put weights in there cars so they would go faster.

 Not sure this is the safest way to use this tool. Men. I'm surprised we didn't loose and arm our finger this night. 

 Had to throw this in. Any time I can get a picture of Andy smiling I have to post it. 

 Alice and Ellie had fun playing that night. For some reason they thought playing in this small cabinet was fun. In fact this was alice's favorite place to play for about 2 months. She loved to climb in side with a toy or a snack and sometimes the ipad and shut the door. She loved it.

 Putting on the wheels was an interesting thing to watch. No you can't just stick the wheels in. They have to be balanced or something I don't know, but it took Derick and Andy like 15 minutes to put there wheels in. Cracked me up. I just don't get derby car stuff.

 So, we like to joke that Ellie has a crush on Andy. this night in particular was hilarious. All the sudden I look over and Ellie is like this. Andy was freaking out. You know how he is with people touching him or sitting close to him. He wont even let me sit this close to him. It was hilarious to watch. I was laughing so hard I thought I was going to fall over. Finally we got ellie to stop hugging him, but man it was funny.

 Now it was time to race. This is another part that was hilarious. I thought people would just bring a there cars and race, but know. Some people pulled out these tact boxes full of pine wood derby stuff. They were putting things on the wheels and then spinning the wheels forever. They had stuff to repair them and also modify them if there car didn't do well in the race. I had know idea. I pretty much laughed the whole night. No offense anyone that is into this kind of thing. More power to you. See that awesome car on the left.

That was my mom's car. She called it the newly wed car. Now you would think a car like that can't be too fast, but believe it or not her car won like 2 races. 

 I didn't know if Alice would get into the racing since our car never won and we only got to race it twice. Yeah, I guess all that research didn't pay off. Alice loved it. She carried that car everywhere and she couldn't wait to put it on the track. When the race was finished she would run down the track clapping and saying "I did it, I did it."

 Guess who won this race. My mom. Who would have thought. He car was a winning machine.

When the races where all over and we had lost everyone I thought it would be fun to race our car against my mom's car and Derick's car. We had to win at least one race. Well, I would like to say we actually won. My mom'a came in second and the derick mobile came in last. So I like to think of our car as a winning car even though it lost three time's before that. I have a feeling there is going to be a ton more research done for next year.