Pinewood Derby 2020

The boys had their first go at the Pinewood Derby with Cub Scouts a few weekends ago and it took quite a bit of time and effort to prep the cars for it.  Scott scoured the internet and I had a coworker lend us her "box of tools" they use for her son's derby car.  Scott had the unfortunate task of building not one, but two cars since boys are scouts.  After several weeks of working on them in the evening, spray painting them in the garage, and adding stickers the boys picked out at Ace Hardware, they were ready!

Evan's is the second one in with the skeletons and he called it "Bone Crusher".

Sean's is the second one in the middle row with that he called "The Bear".

We had to bring the cars in on Thursday evening to have them inspected and impounded until the race Saturday morning.  We were a little nervous with Sean's car because they stick a magnet to each wheel to make sure the axels used were the ones provided and the magnet only stuck to one out of the four.  They ended up approving it - thankfully!

Saturday morning, we headed over to the VFW for a 9am race time.  Evan's den did the flag ceremony and Evan was chosen to carry one of the flags!

The 5th graders, Senior Webelos, got to race first.  Each car races 6 times in each of 6 slots so that it has a turn in each of the slots.  The speeds are recorded and the overall fastest car progresses to the finals.  After the 5th graders, Evan's Tiger den got to go.  His car was consistently 4th place in each of the "heats".  Overall, he was 12th out of 17.  To say he was disappointed was an understatement, but the tears didn't start until after Sean's car went.

Sean's den was one of the last dens to go so it was quite a wait.  We were anticipating a similar result to Evan's since Scott built the cars almost the same.  We were shocked when Sean's car kept coming in 1st place!  In fact, he won for his den and got to go onto the finals!  They did a nice ceremony in the hallway where he got a trophy and a certificate and we had one more den to sit through before the finals started.  Most of the time waiting was spent consoling Evan who was not happy.

One boy from each den that took 1st place in their den got to compete in the finals.  There were five boys and each car got to race in all 6 of the slots.  Once again, we were shocked that Sean's car was either 1st or 2nd every single time!  He ended up winning 1st place overall and won by only a few milliseconds!  Unbelievable...

It was an exciting day for our family and we were completely blown away at winning the entire thing!  Scott has so many ideas for next year so we wrote them all down so that we don't forget them. 

Detroit Pistons ~ Free tickets!

Back at the end of January, when Scott and I went out to celebrate our anniversary, I was bored in the car and called 105.1 The Bounce when they were giving away Pistons tickets.  I couldn't believe it, but I actually was the 10th caller and won!  They put me on the radio and all!  Turns out I won tickets to the following weekend's games: Friday night against the Toronto Raptors and Sunday afternoon against the Cleveland Cavaliers!

I decided to ask Ashley to go with me Friday night since Scott wanted to work on the Pinewood Derby cars and we didn't want to pay for a sitter.  I pre-bought our parking spot and it was easy peasy!  We had a blast, despite the Raptors dominating both the crowds and the game.  We stayed until the start of the fourth quarter and then left to get drinks and appetizers in downtown Plymouth at Ironwood.  It was a fun night!

For Sunday's game, we decided to buy two extra tickets on Stubhub for dirt cheap so that we could go as a family of four.  It was Hooper's birthday!  So, they were giving away Build a Bears that were so cute, free ice cream cups, tons of t-shirt giveaways (Scott caught one for Evan!) and so much more.  The kids had an absolute blast!  We ended up being able to sit in the section with the free tickets since no one had the seats next to us for the kids to use.  We stayed until the fourth quarter and the Pistons were neck and neck with the Cavaliers.  Turns out they went into overtime and won!  Woo hoo!

We had a great time and it made for some inexpensive entertainment all weekend!  So glad I took the chance to call in to the radio!  And now we know how much the boys enjoyed seeing the Pistons game!

Hello, Winter! Ice Festival, Sledding, and Skiing

We always kick off the new year and the month of January with the annual Ice Festival in downtown Plymouth.  This year the weather was unfortunately horrible!  It rained and was mild so most of the sculptures melted Saturday.  We went on Sunday morning when it felt like winter again and they were already trying to remake several of them.  We were also pleasantly surprised to see that the throne was still up!

February also brought some snow!  I can't believe how unseasonably warm and dry it was for both December and January.  I was beginning to think we wouldn't get out again to sled or ski.  One evening after school and work, we surprised the boys by walking back to the sledding hill and having pizza for dinner.  The hill was ridiculously fast from the ice so we only lasted thirty minutes or so before I hit my head and needed to head back.  Oops!

We also decided to head out to Alpine Valley on a Saturday that Sean had an early basketball game and cancelled birthday party plans (his friend was sick).  It was like everything aligned.  Cancelled birthday party, Scott's doctor's appointment got cancelled and the weather was perfect (high 20's and snowy).  The boys did great!  We worked on turns all afternoon and enjoyed a hot chocolate and beer for a warm up in the lodge. 

We've been enjoying our winter and the fact that it's been relatively mild and dry has helped with the winter blues this year.  It's hard to believe in 3 weeks it will be March and we'll be in Arizona and not long after that, sunny Florida!  We're almost through the hard part of the year. 

Evan's guitar lessons and battling clinic

Evan has also had a busy winter with activities.  He started a baseball clinic on Tuesday nights that rotated through stations working on batting and fielding.  Scott took Evan each week and said that there were only 5-6 kids each night so Evan was getting a lot of one-on-one attention.  He has the month of February off and will resume the clinic in March just before baseball season officially starts.  He seems so much more confident batting with the machine!

On Wednesdays after school, Evan started guitar lessons just after Christmas with his music teacher's husband.  He comes to our house for 30 minutes and Evan and him jam in our den.  Evan has learned how to play the intro to Eye of the Tiger, Baby Shark, and some chords that are used in the Ghostbuster song.  It's fun listening to him learn!

Scouts had two meetings this month; a den meeting and a pack meeting.  For the pack meeting, the 3rd grade Bears put on a carnival with games for the other dens to play.  Evan loved rotating around the stations and playing all the games.  He had popcorn and a prize for completing all the games!  The den meeting was at Salem High School where 88.1 The Park is (the local radio station) and the boys got to take a tour of the radio station and record themselves on the radio.

At school, he's been excelling.  He just "published" a how-to story and he chose to give directions for drawing the Ghostbuster logo.  He was Star of the Week last week at school and got to fill out a sheet about himself with pictures.  Each student in his class had to write about him and his teacher made it a spiral bound book.  He seems to be over his issues of not wanting to go to school or not feeling comfortable in his class, thankfully!

Two weekends ago he came down with the flu.  Thankfully he made it through school, but by Saturday morning he was down for the count.  By the time I got home from the Toledo Zoo camp-in with Sean, he had a 102 fever.  Urgent Care confirmed it was Influenza A and they gave him a prescription for Tamiflu.  It moved pretty quickly through him.  He was back to normal by Monday (yay for a holiday weekend).

We're so proud of his progress in school this year!  He's kicking butt in math and reading.  I'm glad to see him happier about school and more comfortable in his class.  He just seems like such a big kid these days!  He's got a strong personality and knows what he likes.  And the sass...oh boy!