The Derby (amongst other activities)

Last Tuesday we got a free dinner with the Native American Studies club. We have a few friends in the club so it was fun to eat and hang out. The boys played with soccer balls out on the lawn and my favorite was the strawberries dipped in the huge chocolate fountain. We had so much fun, that we stayed late and "helped" (meaning I sat and watched while Chris helped to throw out the excess chocolate) to clean up at the end. On Friday we crashed the Latino Studies party for the free food. Then I took the boys to some friends house to play while I watched a movie. Chris went to wine cocktail party for the women's lib club and and enjoyed mingling with the semi-drunk people there.

NOW ONTO THE MORE IMPORTANT NEWS OF THE WEEK!!!

Last month our ward passed out Pine wood derby kits for the big pot luck dinner that was held last night.(more free food YAY!) I considered making some food for the activity, but used all my energy cleaning the house instead. With all his homework and studies going on Chris wasn't able to start building his car until last week. He spent a lot of Last Saturday afternoon cutting and sanding the wood into the perfect shape. On Monday he painted the car yellow (Landon's pick) and on Tuesday he labored to make two perfect blue stripes. On Wednesday he sprayed the car with some gloss which made the blue paint run and ruined all his hard work. On Thursday morning he re-painted the car yellow and realized that we had lost the wheels. He was becoming discouraged but that night he put two new blue stripes on the wood. Friday I picked up a new kit from the local hardware store, for some wheels, and that night Chris worked to polish the wheels and "axles" so they would spin faster and longer. In the middle of polishing, his drill motor blew and he had to run back to the store for a new drill. After the cocktail party he finished polishing the wheels and axles and then spent an hour (we didn't have some tools that would have made it faster) putting the weights on the car. He had to dig into the wood so the weights would be flush with the bottom of the car. I think we went to bed around 11:00 PM. Saturday (yesterday) afternoon he worked hard to align the wheels just right and make the finishing touches on the car. He worked so hard on this little thing, and I was really just hoping to make a good show of it. I just didn't want to come in last.

Chris put the number 23 on the car because it's our "lucky" number, but we were number 14 in the race.

The party was fun. The guys running the show really worked hard to make the track as high tech as possible. The track was aluminum and very long. It was rigged to a timer so that we could get accurate times for the cars. They also had a camera at the bottom of the track connected to a projector so everyone could see the results of all the races. Then they had a computerized spread sheet also connected to the projector so they could post the scores for everyone to see. Each car raced four times (once on each section of the track) and the four times were averaged out to make the final time. Once all 38 cars raced the fastest four cars went up against each other to determine the first place winner. I was kicking myself the whole time for not bringing my camera.

The announcer was great. He did his best to make it funny and always cheered for the slowest cars. Every car was different. There was even a Bus shaped car. Landon and Sam were so excited for our car to race. They sat on the sideline the whole time. When Chris signed us up they asked for the name of our car and with a little help from people around him he named the car "curves". They raced the cars all through dinner and I was amazed at how fast our car went. It won the initial trial with a time of 3.17, and so moved onto the top four cars racing for the win. The four final trials were tough. All four cars were very fast and when our car flew off the track during the first part of the race Chris was worried that the alignment might be off. The officials were kind enough to re-do that section of the race and our car went on to WIN , WIN, WIN. We even beat the chemical engineer's car. He came in one tenth of a second after us. I wish you could have seen Chris' face. He was so happy. Landon did a victory dance right there on the sideline for everyone to see and shouted to everyone how he was "victorious". As a reward Chris got to pick a cake and was given a great hat.

When we got home, we shared the cake with some friends, and Chris texted his family to gloat. I called my dad to share the good news. I knew he would understand, since he had been trying to give me tips on how to build the car all week. He told Chris that he was now the "Man among Men" and then told me not to go into labor from all the excitement. Don't worry Dad, the baby didn't come.