At the end of January, our ward cub scouts had their Pinewood Derby. Followers of this blog will know that our family has a strong Pinewood Derby tradition. Jessica participated one year, and won. Pepper did it last year, and won. So, Brad felt the pressure this year to keep the dream alive.
Adam is almost 8, so they let him build a car this year, which meant both he and Pepper were entered. Brad and the boys spent some quality time out in the garage, designing and building the perfect cars. Each of the boys decided the shape of their cars, Brad cut them, and then the boys each sanded their cars to death. After the sanding, the boys painted their own cars.
Pepper kept his car design simple. He wanted a traditional Nascar shape, and then selected a modest blue paint. He refused my offer to get stickers to spice it up - I guess "less is more" for Pepper.
Adam, on the other hand, had a little more flair. He liked this racier car shape, painted his car green, orange, and yellow, and added as many fire stickers as would fit. He could barely sleep the night before the derby because he was so excited about it!
After the cars were painted and stickerized, Brad added weights to the bottoms and spent A LOT OF TIME putting on the wheels and making dead sure the cars drove perfectly straight. He is convinced this is the secret to winning cars.
So after a tension-filled drive to the church, with each boy holding his car carefully with two hands to make sure the WHEELS DON'T TOUCH ANYTHING, we were ready to race.
You can see that Pepper's blue car and Adam's yellow car performed very well. The black car also gave them a run for their money.
After all the racing was done (and frankly, it took forever), Brad had his 3-peat. Adam took 1st place, our friend Gabe took 2nd, and Pepper took a very close 3rd.
Pepper took it all in a stride, but this was a major event in Adam's life. He walked around all the next day saying, "I can't believe I won!" over and over. I was glad to see him so excited about it all.
But when all is said and done, I really must congratulate Brad. Well done!
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