Pinewood Derby - Repeat Champion

Wintertime in Chicago means two things:  freezing weather and Pinewood Derby time!   This year those two overlapped perfectly.  (Wish I knew how to insert an eyeroll on a blog post....)  It's always a challenge to make (especially paint!) a derby car in a frozen garage but I guess that's just building up your scout's survival skills?!  This year's weigh in was relocated to Buffalo Wild Wings since the school was closed thanks to the Polar Vortex.  Let's be honest, we were all ready to get out of the house by the end of that second day and it was our best trip to BWW ever!  

School was open on Friday (hooray!) so the Derby was able to be held in the school gym that evening as planned.  It's always fun to see the boys' cars displayed in advance. William's is second from the left - the black and blue wedge. The brown one next to it is an ice cream sandwich!   The winter for creativity for Webelos was the white one - it's an ice berg with penguins!  Loved the little details that he did to give the ice texture.

I already have my car planned for next year for the Open division (i.e. parents and siblings)!   It will be our last year so I'm going to get in on the fun! Most of the Open division cars are about creativity.  I have a cool theme for my design in mind, but we're a family focused on speed so I'm going to build it to be fast!   I hope I've learned enough watching William and John over the last few years!

After his fast cars the past two years (2nd place overall in 2nd grade and 1st place overall in 3rd grade), William had high expectations for 4th grade.   I spent the most of the week leading up to the event coaching him that he can only control his own car's build and he has no idea what others will bring.   I was especially nervous after seeing the finished car because the wheels didn't look very good!  But....I didn't build any suspense into this post because I've already given it away in the title that he did win!  His car was the fastest its first run and got faster each of the next three runs - running over 200 MPH! Thanks to the automatic scoring board we knew he was in the lead for the pack after the 4th graders finished and we could see that no 5th graders were as fast.  

The boys and the moms all got some fun pictures waiting for the award

 

  

The winning smile (and car and crew chief)!  I can't wait to see what paint colors he picks for next year's car.  I already know everything else he has planned because it's been the same for the last three years!

Polar Vortex

In January, William only went to school 13 days!  They didn't start back up until Tuesday, January 8 and between snow days, cold days, and holidays, it was a long month!   I honestly can't even keep track of what all the days were!  The worst week was a Monday snow day, Tuesday school, and then Wednesday-Thursday cold days.   The Monday snow day was because the snow plows couldn't keep  up - it was a steady snowfall for about 12 hours so as soon as they did a route it was covered back up.  It was fine by about 9:30 a.m. but the commute/school drop off times were still super slick and sloppy.  It was just hard to take because we knew the cold was coming for later in the week and school was almost guaranteed to be cancelled.  Sure enough!  And I get it.   I was wearing a coat inside my house because it was so cold - and this was with the thermostat showing 70!  Pretty much the entire city shut down those two days:  pipes burst, trains couldn't run on frozen tracks, people couldn't walk around outside with a minus 50 degree wind chill.   But John and I were easily able to work at home, William enjoyed chilling around the house (pun intended!) and we just stayed inside.   We took a few preventive measures with pipes but didn't have any issues around the house. 

I went to work on the Monday snow day.   It was pretty but super sloppy.

 This was the actual temperature.  The "feels" like was at least 20 degree less!

 I couldn't get a good photo but the inside of the window had a pretty snowflake design from frost!

 I can't even remember what days it snowed!  But we certainly didn't go out back to shovel.   Our neighbors let us borrow their snow blower since ours didn't start up.

Lots of time for indoor play! 

 This was my attempt to keep the drafty front door from freezing us out!