The annual Pinewood Derby was held yesterday, and it was great fun for our whole family! For anyone not familiar with this, it is a race in which boys build their own race cars and then compete to see which car is the fastest, and which car has the best design. There is a specified weight limit for the cars, and the track is a specified length and height. The race itself is completely computerized - with the computer generating which cars race in which heats, and even calculating speed. Very official! Our Stockade group at church participates in this each year and our whole family looks forward to it. The "official" racers must be boys in 3rd through 5th grade, so we have several more years of Pinewood Derby action to look forward to. :-)

First, each child building a car draws their design on graph paper and my husband uses his power tools to cut the basic shape.


Then each child further shapes their car and sands it smooth.


Son C did not build a car this year, but he had fun playing with the hand tools, nuts and bolts on daddy's workbench!


We really do try and have the children do as much work as possible on their own cars, but invariably my husband is up late the night before the race, finishing the paint jobs. We always vow to start the whole process earlier the next year, so that we're not up til all hours, but so far that hasn't happened. Here he is cutting away painters tape in flame shapes, to spray paint the nose of daughter G's car with metallic gold flames. You can see her graph paper drawing lying on the table.


The day of the race! Son G's car is in the second lane from the top, with a gold streak painted on it. In numerous heats, his car consistently came in second, with a top speed of 199 mph!


My other pictures of the race are pretty blurry, but son L's car came in 4th out of 22 in his division. He is on the far right with his fourth place trophy.


And son G, representing the older boy's group, in the middle with his second place trophy.


Little Man raced in the open class, using the car that our daughter built, and son C also raced in the open class with one of his big brother's cars from last year, so everyone in our family participated this year! It was a very exciting morning!