Pinewood Derby Car Stands

Jorja was so excited about her derby car the other day and couldn't wait to make a stand for it so she could display it proudly. She helped me find plans for making a stand online.

I cut the boards but she had fun sanding, drilling and screwing it together.

Next week she wants to paint the stand a nice shiny blue.

Slot Cars

A couple of years ago, Santa Claus brought the kids a slot car set for Christmas. At the time, they were a little young to appreciate it, but they have recently rediscovered it.

Stockton, Preston and I spent some time together building some pretty cool tracks and racing slot cars. Preston was pretty cute racing, watching, and being an obstacle for the cars.

One of these days we might try to hook up some proximity sensors above the lanes and program a microcontroller to count the laps and lap times for the cars, showing them on a little LCD screen. That would be a pretty cool project, and I should have all the parts we'd need...

Super Blooper

Stockton's cub scout pack had their pinewood derby today. I was proud of Stockton, Jorja and Maysen for working hard on their cars this week!

After the derby, we raced all our family's cars on the track. Out of our group, Jorja's Super Blooper car was the fastest...



It was fun watching Stockton's races during the derby. He did pretty well and made it to the semi-finals. Here is his car racing against the Mach 4 car from Speed Racer and Sponge Bob Square Pants' boat...



Way to go Stockton!

Pretty nice looking car, Stockton... Jorja wants to make a stand like this next week for her car.

My batmobile did pretty well. It looked good, but I was too chicken to fire off the rocket motor with all the people away. We wouldn't want anyone getting hurt....

Derby Days

Each night this week the kids and I worked on our pinewood derby cars. Tomorrow is the big day!

Jorja did a great job polishing her axles today. She was so cute working the drill press.

Here are some more pictures from the week of sanding and painting...

Here are the finished cars. Maysen's is the burgundy one, mine is the batmobile, Jorja's is the white Super Blooper and Stockton's is the red one with flames.

OK, I'll admit that the batmobile does have a few tricks up it's sleeves. Besides the working headlights and tail lights, it also has a remotely controlled rocket motor hiding in the back.



I made a similar rocket car a couple of years ago. It took off like mad and smashed into the cinderblock wall of the church. I'm not sure if I'll really fire this one off or not - I'd hate to see if smashed into bits, but we'll see...

Cat in the Hat Hats

Jorja told me that she wanted to make Dr. Seuss hats today. We did a quick search and found some good instructions here. They say to use construction paper, but we didn't have any that would fit around our heads, so we opted for postboard. It's stronger anyway.




One of the things I love about Jorja is that she is always thinking of other people, and about kind things she can do for others. She wanted to make hats for both her teachers, herself, and a friend. (Actually, she wanted to make them for everyone in her class, but making 20 or so of these is more than I was willing to take on).

Stockton saw the hats and wanted one, so Jorja said he could have the one she made for her friend. She is so nice!

We used the left over scraps to make some cute cat-in-the-hat bowties to go with them.

I love how Jorja comes up with these fun ideas!

Cheaters Never Prosper....Sorta

Maysen and I played Age of Mythology for Time with Dad tonight. It is one of her favorite computer games. A while ago we looked up a bunch of cheat codes for the game. Here are some videos of us picking on the computer players with our ill-begotten units. Namely, flying purple hippos and laser bears - something you don't see every day. Those greeks never knew what hit 'em!

Maysen loves these cheat units. The flying purple hippos (which she calls FPH's) attack with love -they throw red hearts at the enemy and leave a shimmering rainbow wherever they go. Laser bears wear a Canadian flag and shoot lasers out of their eyes.

Maysen also started her science project today. I am proud of her for thinking of her project all by herself and doing all the work. She is growing different groups of bean seeds, "watering" them with 4 different liquids: water, milk, orange juice, and coke. It will be interesting to see which groups fares the best.

Perhaps plants in the South enjoy the cool refreshing taste of Coke better? Or the fizz will make them grow huge? We'll report back when she's done with her research.

It's almost Derby season...

At Stockton's pack meeting tonight they announced that Pinewood Derby season is almost upon us once more. I'm excited because Maysen, Stockton and Jorja all wanted cars. Hmmm...let's see....I have no job and have a basement full of power tools. What could be better?




The last time I made a derby car for myself was for a no-rules adult derby a couple years back. I made a rocket powered car that was pretty sweet. You can check it out here.



The kids want to go with the Mario Kart theme this year. Here are some pictures that might give us some inspiration. I like the look of Mario's car below...


Stockton might go for the cheap-cheap chaser....



And I believe Jorja wants to make a Super Blooper...






In related news, Jorja and I played Mario Kart Wii again for Time With Dad today. That's Jorja on the top half of the screen playing as Yoshi in a Super Blooper. I'm Luigi on the bottom screen. I am trying to learn how to use the manual drift/turbo controls rather than the automatic, because learning them may be my one and only chance at beating Stockton. As a result, I played worse than ever, but Jorja was especially proud of this race.



WARNING: If you play this video, turn the sound down because it recorded VERY LOUDLY.



Nice job Porge!