Pinewood Derby 2010

We had our annual Pinewood Derby this weekend! We turn this into a family affair - one of the things I love about Cub Scouting. Andy made a skateboard car, Mom and Katie made a Pink Cheetah car, and Dad made a cool creation for Ryan to race. Dad was disappointed that the glossy epoxy finish that Mom talked him into using this year made the design bleed, but what can you do. The kids had fun racing. The track we used this year is really cool! Ever since we've been in the Pack, the Pack has always payed a "professional" Pinewood Derby guy to come out and set up a metal track complete with computerized timing. The guy was not available this year, but someone who used to be in our Pack was moving and found boxes in their garage, which turned out to be storing this old hand-built track among other things. With a little TLC from some of the dads and some computer programming, this track came back from the dust and served us well this year!

Scout Sunday

"Those who say it cannot be done should not interrupt those who are doing it." - unknown

Our Church, Horizon Unitarian Universalist, has never had a Scout Sunday recognition before. Perhaps this is because of the strained relations between the UU church and the BSA, due to the BSA's policy on gays and athiests, versus the UU church's acceptance of all people regardless of orientation or beliefs. Can't say for sure. Although it's ironic that this picture of our family on our first Scout Sunday was taken in front of the banner which proclaims, "Standing on the side of love."

My friend Kristin and I, who are both heavily involved in both Boy Scouting and Girl Scouting through our kids, hatched a plan to simply ask for a Scout Sunday recognition at one of the services in February. Ask and ye shall receive! As it turns out, there are quite a few past and present scouts at our church! In the end, I am not surprised, given that many of the values of the UU church parallel those of scouting.

Snow Day!

I have had good intentions of starting a family blog for quite some time. If not for myself alone, perhaps the kids would enjoy having this record of their childhood at some point after they've grown up, when the things that annoy them now will be fond memories later.

We have missed several good opportunities to jump into Blogging, but this time there are no excuses. 2 days cooped up at home without school, work, swim practices, or scouting, as those and all other obligations cancelled...the stars have finally lined up!

We are lucky to have sleds because we visited Grandma P in Colorado Springs over Christmas. We were supposed to ski, but the temps were too cold so we decided to sled on Christmas Day instead. Things like sleds and snowboots are impossible to find in Texas, but displayed in the entry of every Walmart and grocery store in Colorado. So we brought our $8 plastic wonders back to Texas in hopes that we'd have occasion to use them again. Good thing we did! The Texas kids use things like cookie sheets, recycle bin lids, and pieces of cardboard!

This snow is unusual because of how long it lasted (started snowing Wednesday night and snowed all day Thursday, at least until dusk) but also because it's wet, sticky, above-freezing snow. We got between 4 and 6 inches, so it was deep enough to do more than dust the yard. We rolled snowmen, built a sledding bump, had snowball fights, and got VERY wet - on account of the above-freezing part. We went over to the hill behind Flower Mound Elementary at one point because it was the only hill we knew of in town. I guess lot of other people had the same idea, because there were lots of kids and parents there. Our neighbor, Michael, and our friends the Lindes joined us. Katie and Emma built a fort and stocked it with snowballs. I made a few snow-hamsters, but when I tossed them over to Katie to put in her snow-cage, she screamed at me, "Mom! Stop throwing hamsters!" Andy and Michael sledded and "snowboarded" for hours. Ryan got his kicks throwing snowballs for a dog to catch in his mouth, and later throwing snowballs at the side of the school (after repeated reminders not to throw any more at human targets.)

The next day school was cancelled again. Andy woke up bright and early to go out and sled some more in Michael's front yard. Katie soon joined. Dad was trying to work from home. Ryan and I walked around the yard with a garden hoe and used the pole to knock on tree branches to loosen the sticky snow, which has already broken some weaker limbs off of some of the wax myrtles in the yard. Giving Ryan permission to hit things with a large stick may come back to haunt me!