Vrooooom!! Vrooooom!!

We determined to be prepared this year.  We scheduled a Pinewood Derby BBQ Building party 3 weeks ahead of the Derby date so we could begin the process of building cars for the three official entrants and the 4 unofficial sibling entrants.  Why do I allow life to be more complicated than necessary??!?  It should have just been 3 instead of 7 cars!  I guess it stems from having made one myself growing up and loving the creativity they come up with.  

Pictured are more than this year's cars.  Not pictured is Kenzies' VW Vanagon replica, or Derek's 'Kitty lurking in the grass car'.  They had been taken home at the time of the photo shoot.  I'll have to track them down for follow up photos.

 I did catch a shot of the kitty lurking in the grass car at the derby with Derek who arrived late sporting his soccer championship medal! His car performed very well when it ran backwards on the track and actually out performed many of the top cars from the actual race!  Just wait until next year folks when this cool cat is an official racer!

 This was Duncan and Sarah's 2nd year racing cars, and Miles third (He built 2 cars last year!)  They pulled their old models out so they could race against their old models when the official racing was finished.  Miles was certain that this year's car would be the fastest of them all but although he followed the pattern in the Pinewood Derby book of champion cars and did all the tricks that were suggested, his car that he threw together last year just for fun, without any assistance, tricks or aerodynamics, which he refers to as 'the squid', is by far his fastest car of them all. 

Duncan this year had an assistant designer.  Jim had given a drawing of a car to Duncan a while ago which he had named the 'Duncatti Diablo'.  Duncan could not be swayed.  He wanted to build his 'Duncatti Diablo'.   So Jim willingly came over for many afternoons and evenings of cutting, sanding and painting to achieve the dream car!  It wasn't built for speed, it was all about the looks! 

Sarah designed the pink convertible last year for fun.  This year she was serious about speed.  It worked.  Although she didn't race officially, no one could beat her little blue speed demon. 

 Cooper changed his mind on design as often as he changed his socks in a 2 week period!  We looked up pokemon characters, greek gods, phineas and ferb drawings and finally was able to pin him down to a Star Wars themed car.  The force was definitely with him!  In fact perhaps a little too much.  His front wheel flew off the first race down the track.  The pit crew managed to glue it back on and he raced quite well into the semi-finals, but in the second to last race the car spontaneously combusted to beyond repairable for race time status.  At the moment of his combustion the officiators table also combusted, or the leg collapsed and the equipment keeping track of all the race day info went to the ground.  There was a pause in racing while the equipment was thankfully all recovered and the table was secured.  Cooper was out of the racing.  He happily informed everyone that is was as though the death star itself had exploded and the impact had been felt all the way to the officiators table.  He felt pleased with a semi-finals placing, and hadn't really wanted to win after all since he had taken first last year and before racing began had said it would be nice for another boy to have a chance. 

 Whittaker was the most patient honorary cub scout in the building.  As the weeks had progressed and the dining room had been taken over by pinewood derby creation stations, he had managed to get his hands on a piece of discarded wood from the other side of a car that had been cut into a thinner wedge.  He determined that this was his car.  We humored him and he sanded along with the big kids.  He then painted on painting day.  We paid no attention to his details or tidiness.  The car had divots, gauges and big globs of paint in places.  The colours of paint he chose all ended up blended into one bluish, grey, black mixture all over the car. 

The night before the races, we worried about weights for all the cars except his.  His didn't even have wheels!  Just before bedtime we yanked the wheels off of one of Caleb's first cub cars and popped them on Whittaker's.  He loved his car.  He raced it up and down the hall.  It went careening down the stairs.  He loved his car. 

After he went to bed, I grabbed some yellow paint and put a fleur-de-lis on the front of the car.  When he woke up in the morning he saw his car and immediately referred to it as his 'scout' car.  He dressed for scouts and wouldn't put the car down.  (except for a few times when he dropped it)  We were glad he had his car as I was adjusting wheels and adding graphite to the axles on the other cars.  (Caleb was gone all day at a leadership training seminar and Patrick had to work on the day of the derby, and had stayed up until 2am getting the weights correct but left instructions for me about wheels, graphite and axles.)  I am not an expert pit crew member, nor do I wish to be. 

At the derby Whittaker watched each and every race with excitement.  They did a five second count down before each race and he became quite good at his counting down.  At the end of the first set of races they reached a point where there was a 'bye'.  (With 29 official cub scout cars there was an odd number of cars to race) so this car raced alone down the track and won its' race by default.  We were seated near the announcer and the next time a 'bye' race occurred I asked if she would indulge us and race Whittaker's car along with the official car.

He marched up to the track and proudly handed his car to the official.  He stood still waiting for the count down and then raced down the track to follow his little car.  He was THRILLED!  His car didn't do too badly either considering it weighed all of 3oz, compared to the other 5oz cars, it had 10 year old wheels that had been banged around a lot, he had dropped his car more than a dozen times and  no one had helped him with weight placement or aerodynamics. 

He ended up racing about 6 times throughout the derby with great cheers from the crowds.  His car ALMOST beat Miles when it came to a 'bye' race. 

Our official judges were the district scout commissioner and the Scout Council Representative for Salt Lake.  They both came up to congratulate our little scout mascot on his performance.

The derby had begun with check-in at 10:30 in the morning.  At noon, we had a potluck BBQ lunch and then the races began about 12:30.   The derby didn't end until almost 3pm.  Although we did our best and had a great time, none of us left having won any official awards, except maybe Whittaker.  He fell asleep in the car on the way home clinging to his scout car.  

Perspective

I am grateful that I don't put all my eggs into one basket..

In this instance I'm referring to not pinning all my hopes on a particular holiday, such as shall we say... Mother's day.  I will explain.  I spent the day set aside to honour motherhood wrestling with an extremely overtired 2 1/2 year old through church.  Then I left early with the 11 year old so he could be at home to continue his vomiting with a little 24 hour flu bug he had picked up.  The before mentioned toddler, returned home to have a massive poop accident; he's been accident free for over a week now.  The kids made both lunch and dinner laden with carbs that I'm desperately trying to avoid, but it was so OH SO TASTY!.  We played a game of clue that ended with at least 3 people in tears.  Daddy took a 4 hour nap while the kids made him some tasty cookies to thank him for staying up until 2 am to get their pinewood derby cars to the exact 5 oz weight, after working 6 (12-14hour) days in a row. 

I suppose I could have demanded all MY favourite foods, a long hot bubble bath, and some extra pampering but instead I saw that in reality the good outweighs the bad, the toddler is essentially potty trained for which I am THRILLED!  My kids are pretty darn good little chefs!  My husband is a hard worker who goes the extra mile for us and is happily and easily rewarded with chocolate morsels.  My children understand that it's what they do everyday that really matters and not on those set aside mandated days!  All week they had been lamenting that because they don't attend a 'real' school they had nothing for mother's day to give me.  So they washed and vacuumed out the van on Friday.  They filled many cups with weeds flowers to put in the window sill each day.  They routinely make me my breakfast or fill my water bottle so it's always full when I come to it.  There are bed making fairies that regularly beat me to my room while I potty in the mornings.  They are so quiet in the mornings playing and starting their days while I'm still sleeping (some mornings too long!).  They offer to make lunch more than I do. (They're just sick of burritos I'm sure, but then they go and make burritos!!)  They know me so well and don't mind that what I like to do for fun is to organize and purge out a cupboard or tackle a project that's been on my mind, so they even helped me organize the office this week, shredding paper, running errands up and down the stairs to fetch things or put away things, testing pens and markers, shelving books for subjects they'd rather not have to study, labeling electrical cords and rearranging furniture for the 5000th time.  I secretly think they enjoy it also! 

So, yes... I'm glad I don't paint my life based on the picture that only one day of poop, fussing and vomit might create!  Instead I paint a picture with 5 fantastic kids that don't mind calling me Mummy in a world full of Mommy's.  I'm one fortunate Mum.