Our First Pinewood Derby

So, we're sitting in church bright and early on Sunday morning, still a little groggy, when we hear over the pulpit that Pinewood Derby is TUESDAY!!! What? No, we have to have another week right? Nope, weigh-in was Monday night.

This is when I offered Andrew $5 to forget about the pinewood derby this year. Nope he wasn't interested. After the sacrament I held up all 10 fingers. Ten bucks and the kid still said no. Can you believe it? I was honestly willing to go up to twenty but he was adamant that he was racing a car in the derby.

Oh my goodness, panic, our "car" was still a block of wood in a box. We were so far in over our heads it wasn't even funny.

We got home, ate and put on our standard after church uniform, pajamas. It was time to go to work with power tools, on the Sabbath. Aye yai yai.

There was a rule this year that the kids had to help with every step. If it looked like they didn't and that the father did all the work the car would be entered into the dads race. They wouldn't get to race it against the other boys.

Rules smules, I wasn't letting my eight year old use the hand saw.

He did help sand with my sander.
He smoothed, or rather flattened, the wheels all on his own. ( I got them back to almost round)
He helped drill the holes for the weights that Robb graciously gave us.
And he glued them in.
He painted all on his own. He wanted it tie-dyed.
Pretty awesome little buddy.
We are set.
We went to Roy's on Monday for weigh in where they put on some graphite.
It was exactly 5 oz. Whew!
Now it's out of our hands.
RACE NIGHT!!!

Here's the track. Doesn't that seem like an obscenely long flat part? I started worrying that our car would stop about half way and just sit.
But it made it to the end! We even won one of the races and placed second in another. Look how excited Andrew is.
On your marks, get set, go!
Here is Andrew with his car but no trophy. He wasn't ranked in the top three but he had a great time.
Next year we are going to put a lot more time and thought into this. We did well as it was and had a ton of fun. I think we could do a lot better if we tried harder. Emma wants to make one. too (anyone could race in the dad's race) It should be a lot fun.