James' Pinewood Derby

Last Thursday was James' Cub Scout Pinewood Derby. James was given the car kit in January. We thought the Derby was going to be held the end of February, so there was no rush to start working on the car. I signed James up for a class at Lowes about how to make a Pinewood Derby car and they mentioned that they would demonstrate how to use a dremmel on the car as part of the class. When Rick took James to the class they learned that it had been held the day before and they had missed it. I tried to sign him up for another class (they had said that they held them every week) but that must have been the last one. Oh well.
Then the ward announced that February pack meeting was the Blue and Gold banquet. So we had either missed the pinewood derby or we had another month to prepare. So we waited longer. The only thing we did to prepare was draw a couple of preliminary designs and borrow Grandpa Simmons' jig saw and dremmel.

Angela was at the Library and found a book about making Pinewood derby cars. It had lots of pictures and instructions. We appreciated that alot. It was our first step in the right direction.

On Saturday before the big race, Rick started to work on the car with James. Forget the fancy shaped vehicles. That is too hard and takes too long. They made a simple wedge shape (cut diagonally from the top back down to the bottom front. Then James started to sand it. John and Dad also drilled holes in the top back to insert the weights to bring it up to the correct weight, and filled in the hole with some body putty that we borrowed from Grandpa. We only had an old postal scale so we were REALLY guessing how much weight to put in. They figured that they could add some "sinkers" into the bottom of the car if it weighed too little and drill holes out of the bottom of the car if it weighed too much. They also prepared the nails so they would be smooth where the plastic wheels would spin on them. Thank goodness we had saved all the left over weights, graphite etc. from making Lee and John's cars about 10 years earlier. That saved a lot of trips to the store.
Mom's job was to take that simple shape and help it turn into a good looking car (which is all Mom really cared about). We got some primer from Grandpa Simmons, and on Wednesday afternoon, Mom and James went to the store to get some fancy pinewood derby stickers. There was one set of stickers that had triangle shaped flames. That was obviously the choice. We got them and chose some spray paint that would make the flames show up (not blend into the background color). Silver!

The car weigh in was Wednesday night at 7:00 at the church. But Dad and John and everyone had other places they had to be so James and Mom gathered up all the pieces and the car with 1 coat of primer and walked with James over to the church.
When we got there, we saw all the completed cars getting weighed and being put in a special box to keep the cars until the big race day. When it was our turn to weigh in, we just set the nondescript wedge shaped piece of wood and the 4 nails and 4 wheels in a pile on the scale. It was too light, so they cut a weight (with 1/4 ounce sections) and gave us 14 grams (1/2 ounce) with sticky tape on the back and said we could stick that much weight onto the car and still be within weight.

On the way walking home, we delivered Scouting for Food grocery bags to the houses on our assigned route. When we got home, we kept painting the wood (setting the timer for 15 minutes so the paint would have time to dry).


Then when John and Dad got home, they helped James apply the graphite in all the places where things rub and they installed the nails into the existing slots for the axles (They made sure to only push the nails in and leave a gap between the car and the wheel the thickness of 3 business cards).


Then we put 2 of the kitchen table legs up on 2x4's to slope the table top, and they checked to see if the car would drive straight. Eventually they got it to go straight and we put hot glue in the slots to hold the nails in that exact position.



Last of all, we used grandpa's dremmel with a felt head to spin the wheels very fast on the axels to work in the graphite. Bed Time!





The next day, we were very careful with the car. We added all the stickers. We loved this part. It started looking very fancy. We also stuck the 1/2 ounce weight they gave us at weigh in on the back of the car. The car was ready by noon. We made sure to eat dinner early enough to get to the race early enough to weigh in.

Everything went smoothly. The track was very sophisticated with a computer to time each run. Each car ran 8 times. There were 26 "heats". James' car took first a few times, 2nd a few times and 3rd a few times. But never 4th. At the end of the race, his car was 4th fastest. The track owner's 2 boys cars took 1st and 2nd, and then hundredths of a second later another boy then thousandths of a second later, James'. James's award was The HOT ROD car. (I think because of all the flames it had on it). It was a fun experience.

Easter Celebration

Our family got together on Easter and really enjoyed ourselves. This is my favorite holiday of the whole year. During the week before, I went to K-mart and bought more than $30 of candy. I was informed that this was too much so I took about half of it back. We still had about 7 bags of candy to hide in many dozens of plastic eggs.

The ward choir had prepared an easter program for church, but one of the songs, "He is Risen!" was too big of a song with too many high soprano parts for our small choir to perform, so the director asked to have violins play the vocal parts and I play the piano part to accompany them. Julianna, Angela, and Lizzy VanDeGraaf got together on Saturday night in the chapel to rehearse. Thanks to Vicki VanDeGraaf's honesty, telling us that the violin parts needed to be embellished, we spent a couple of hours and created a very nice arrangement to go with Sally DeFord's choir arrangement. The whole sacrament meeting program turned out really well. We had never had more than 10 or 15 people to the practices.... and always a different 10 or 15. But when the choir went up to the stage, we had a very full choir. The whole program went very well and was very inspirational. People complimented the director and music chairman for the whole week following the program.

Just before Sacrament meeting, I taught the 8 year olds a lesson about why we celebrate Easter, and about Jesus' resurrection. I felt like they learned alot.

I got out of bed early that morning and put a roast into the crock pot. I had baked an angel food cake the day before, and after church, the kids helped me turn the angel food cake into my favorite spring dessert, flower cake. It is kind of like trifle with broken pieces of cake held together in this case with a bright lemony sauce which is refrigerated to become like a mix of jello and pudding. It is served with whipped cream on the top. Everyone in the family loved it.

After we made the flower cake, and Marie and JP filled the plastic eggs with candy, Rick and I went outside to hide the eggs and the kids set the table (with the blinds closed so they couldn't see us outside.) I love this part. I get so excited looking for good places to hide the eggs. And I anticipate what it will be like for the kids to find the eggs. I just feel so happy. We had more candy than we could find places to hide so I sent some inside for Rick to hide in the living room too.

We let the kids go out and start looking for eggs, youngest first. Considering that people who were looking ranged in age from 8 to 25, the younger ones really needed a head start. Plus, we hadn't had many serious egg hunts for a few years so the younger ones really were also less experienced hunters. After searching the back yard, we let them go to the front yard in order of who had the least eggs in their bucket. JP got to go out near the beginning because he had been distracted by taking pictures in the back yard. In the front yard, he searched much more agressively. James had a tendency to see where others were finding eggs and then go there, but not until the eggs had all been found. I loved seeing the kids find the eggs. Angie found some up high and pointed and yelled "It's mine! It's mine!" and JP came and helped her get them. John found lots of candy, but in a few days, Angie found his bucket of candy by the computer and generously passed it out to herself and her other siblings. Everyone loved the malted milk eggs. Lee ate his candy almost as fast as he found it.

After the egg hunt, we enjoyed our dinner together and had a short hunt in the living room for the rest of the candy. Each went into the living room individually and got to find 4 candies and then the next older one would got to find 4. By the time it got to me, I had a real hard time finding 4 candies.... I only found 3 and someone had to help me find my last. But there were still 3 or 4 candies left for Rick.

The capstone for our Easter celebration was listening to Marie recite from memory, "The Living Christ, The Testimony of the Apostles, The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints". She and JP had taken a challenge from their bishop to memorize it before Easter. (see their blog). Marie had gathered pictures to go along with the document. It was very inspiring and a very appropriate ending to our day.

Julianna gets a hair cut

Julianna wanted her hair cut. She decided to donate it to "Locks of Love", so she had to cut 10 inches, which she decided was kind of too short, but she went with it. The cut took 4 hours of Friday afternoon and me and James were singing "it is the cut that never ends yes it goes on until she's bald somebody started cutting it not knowing what it was and they'll continue cutting it forever just because..."

JP's New Job!!

Jp has now found a job!! He will be working at the Granite Mountain Vaults. You can read more about it on his blog post. We're very excited for the changes and new direction that will be bringing.
Also, last weekend JP and I took James and Angie to see a model train festival in Ogden. You can see pictures on our blog post. I liked seeing all of the models, especially the Hogwarts Express model from Harry Potter, and the little Thomas the tank engine. It was also fun to get to climb inside a real caboose, and get on a new Front Runner Trax train to stay out of the cold and snow.