Thursday, October 8, 2009

Preparing for the Vegetable Race

Several years ago we were on a Disney cruise where they held a vegetable derby. It was similar to a pinewood derby except that everyone had to make their own cars out of carrots and potatoes.


Last year Stephanie was on the ward activities committee and suggested we do that for an activity. Everybody made their own cars out of whatever vegetable or fruit you brought in. You even had to make the wheels (toothpick axles were provided). It was a lot of fun and I'm proud to say that the Smith family held it's own during that competition - taking 1st, 2nd, 3rd, 4th, and "best of show". Sweet revenge from my pinewood derby years.


Maysen's birthday is coming up this week and she decided that she wanted to have a vegetable derby at her party. Tonight we started working on the track.





We have a bunch of lumber that we scavenged from my neighbor when he moved out. (It used to be the frames for a spray-tanning booth that they had in their basement as a side business.) Glad we were able to put it to good use.


Here is a picture of our 5 cars from last year's ward competition:


Cars of Stephanie, Mike, Maysen, Jorja and Stockton from last year

The first place car is Stepanie's yucca-root on the left. Note that sweet 3 wheel design - not a bad piece of work. It kept the front wheel from falling off.


In other news, I officially launched my new business today and put up my new website hoping to lure in customers. I'm teaching classes about movie making - stuff like camera moves, scriptwriting, storyboarding, special effects, etc. For those interested, check out http://www.moviemakerz.net/. I'll be launching a parallel business shortly, teaching video game creation and robotics for kids.

Fingers crossed!