Pine Wood Derby 2012

This year for the Pine Wood Derby Rand made all my wishes come true and started working on the car very early on. Last year we barely finished and the end result was not pretty. This year as soon as Ethan was given his block of wood he made up a list of at least 10 different original designs, with the emphasis on "original". He finally settled on a a basic race car look but was sure that it needed to have lightning bolts on it. I'm sure that has nothing to do with his ever steady obsession with Harry Potter. Rand cut the car to his specifications and then they painted it up. First they painted it silver and then cutout lightning bolts in tape and taped where they wanted them. Then they painted the whole thing a shiny black and removed the tape to reveal the silver bolts. It turned out to be a pretty great looking car and I was proud that it was all Ethan's design and follow through. For his award he was given "Most Realistic", which is the exact award he won last year....
He was excited about the race and we didn't have to do much prep before hand this year in regard to sportsmanship ie. it's doesn't matter if you win, be happy for those that do etc. He came in 4th out of 10 and was very happy with that and went up one place from last year. He was a really good sport about the whole thing and really enjoyed it.
We had to add A lot of coins on the bottom to get it to the right weight. Maybe next year we'll actually weight it before hand with lead or something. I think those that do that end up placing better and it doesn't look quite so "tacky".

Whenever I go to things like The pine wood derby it makes me feel kind of old and legitimate. I remember attending those when I was a little girl with my brothers. The fact that Ethan will be ten this year, wears the same shoe size as me and is so "mature" blows my mind. I'm getting old.