2012 Pinewood Derby

So the Pinewood Derby crept up on us in the midst of all our lovely days of doing nothing.  I pretty much dropped the ball on all that was required of me that day including some brownies that were flopped.  In my fog I nodded to James that he could use avocado oil for baking - they were also neglected in the oven, not burned but over cooked enough that we could barely get a knife through them. So they did not make it to their spot on the refreshment table.  I already posted a pretty lengthy facebook update about it that evening but thought it might be fun to have a record of it here as well.

The cars were barely completed in time and both were still sticky in hand with paint and glue on the ride over (good thing it is a 25 minute ride).   William is a Webelo but I have yet to sew on his Wolf and Bear badge, same for Peter he's still waiting for his Bobcat badge.  At least we found the shirts!

Anyway, despite my neglect it turned out to be another exciting night of racing cars.  I stayed home with the baby but Paul was there cheering them on with Nanny and Poppy, their cousin David and all the younger siblings.  While I so enjoy assisting in the design process Paul has mastered the variables of speed.  Wiiliam once again took second while Peter was a very close third (they are still arguing over the distance "I was only a millimeter behind" - "no, you were at least a centimeter").

Here the cars are alongside the others from past years.  Most of the design inspiration has come from the Henry Ford museum and our extensive collection of matchbox cars.  Not pictured are the traditional 1/2 inch licence plates created on adobe with name, date and State.  With 6 boys now we figure we'll end up with a collection of at least 16 cars.

William's first design idea for this year's car was a Jedi star fighter but thought it would be too intricate to carve, so he settled on the streamlined winged helmet car. We were pressed for time so we skipped painting on the details and used yellow construction paper  and ModgePodge instead.

Here is Peter's car.  It has sort of a futurist body with him in driver's seat and his hen "Mendori" riding as the passenger.  He had plans to graffiti it with all sorts of symbols including pi, infinity and yin/yang.  But since we were short on time we simply glued on 3 simple stars.  You can see we didn't wait long enough for the paint to dry as it is also decorated with lots of smudgy finger prints.  But I'd say it adds to the personality of the car.

After the event Paul treated everyone to Jimmy John sandwiches.  I was already asleep by the time they got home but the boys were so excited to give the report that they ran into my room, turned on the lights and threw a wrapped Jimmy John's sandwich at me to wake me up.  Normally it irritates me to be woken up so abruptly (especially when I know I'm already heading into a night of disrupted sleep) but it was worth it to witness the triumph they were still riding, besides, nursing makes me really hungry so I gobbled down the entire sandwich before they could even get out all the details.  As trophies they each brought home a stainless steel water bottle. 

And finally, after reviewing all the photos Paul emailed me from the event I decided it was time once again to get out the hair clippers.  We just took care of that a few days ago but still in my fog I can't say the hair cuts turned out any better than the flopped brownies.  But at least hair grows and these boys aren't too fussy.......they eventually dug out all the scraps and crumbs of the brownies, consumed them with compliments and never even mentioned the missing badges from their Boy Scout uniforms.