Sunday, August 22, 2010

April Showers . . .


April was a busy month for us. We took a trip back to Oxford and Miami University during our spring break. Danny participated in a Conference with old professors on campus while the kids and I painted pottery at "You're Fired." It is an awesome studio owned by my good friend Lisa Leishman. Emily painted a butterfly and Sam turned a flower pot into a Super Mario Pot.

It was also Kidsfest Weekend at Miami. They had bouncers, games, every meal, movies, crafts, prizes and all kinds of entertainment for the AWESOME price of free!!!



Our favorite were the pirates. Jack Sparrow was there and made it a point to compliment Johnny Depp in doing such a good job of portraying him in all of his movies. He was seriously SO good.


And that was just the beginning of April.

Getting Down With Derby

Sam looked forward to his chance at participating in the Pinewood Derby for years. We have a movie called "Down with Derby" that gave him a kind of skewed perspective of what it would really be like but never the less it was memorable.


Danny and Sam worked super hard together to come up with his dream car and Emily played with all of the scraps. Sam learned how to use a power saw, power drill and logged a lot of time with the sanding block. They went shopping together for the perfect paint color and fillers and then made sure to add the paint in lots of layers, sanding in between to get the highest sheen. Then Sam added cool stickers to put on the number one and to name it windjet.



I was a nervous mama the morning of the race because just like every other boy in the room Sam was SUPER positive that all of his work and his newly acquired knowledge on the power of graphite would pay off. OF COURSE his little wooden hot rod was going to beat out the competition. I could see the look on other mom's faces too. It was emotional for me because with every race there was a loser and some little guys even burst into tears.

A little hand is pointing out Sam's hot red car.

But race after race Sam's car won until the very end. His car won the wolf division that consisted of all the 8 year olds and took second in the overall pack. Not too bad for the first try. He was a really gracious winner but didn't quite know what to do when he accepted his trophy and everyone was cheering. So he just waved his hand, did a little gunpoint and flick of the wrist as he winked and said, "yeah, thanks." It was hilarious and had the parents rolling.

Our cute neighbor Sid came to watch the fun with his mom Janine and sister Layla.
Our troop leader made super cute badges for each of our boys.

He is already talking about next years car :)