Kyle knew he wanted to design a Minecraft car for his first Pinewood Derby. He and his Dad shaped a car with the few tools.
Kyle drew out a plan, sanded the car, and painted it green.
I helped to tape out the design for the face.
The car looked great.
However, we had no way of weighing it before checking in, and we were WAAAAAAAY under the weight. Of course, Stephen was on call, so I was frantically trying to rig this thing together in the few minutes we had before the deadline. {Did I mention that we were later than I planned because right before we were supposed to leave the house, Kyle was swinging the car around by the wheels and one of the axels popped off and rolled away. We were down on hands and knees looking for it for what seemed like 3 hours with no luck. Finally, I held up the couch and we found the missing piece. Sadly, part of the wood that held that axel in place had also chipped off, so I just prayed the thing would hold up.} Fast forward to check in. We are pulling every coin in my purse out to reach the desired weight and then began hot gluing and taping them all over the car. Kyle hated how it looked then, and whined to me when his car sucked on the trial run. However, he'd already checked in, so we couldn't change a thing. I had had it by that time, as I was the only mom there with all the engineer dads helping their boys. At least we could tell Kyle's was made by him.
I stood by, just praying his creeper would hold up for the races. Thankfully, he did alright, even winning one of his heats!
He didn't win, by any means, other than the award for "Fastest Creeper." He did end up having a fun time, and I could cross that "joy" off my list...until next time.
{P.S. Just when I thought the night couldn't get any worse, I came home, ready to just eat a pint of ice cream and veg out on some HGTV while Stephen was still at work, but Kyle kept coming in, telling me the other two wouldn't stop playing around. The first time, I told Kyle to tell them they had 5 minutes to get to sleep or I would come in. Not 2 minutes later, Kyle was back. Normally, I would yell back to the room with threats, but I wanted this to be over. I went to the room myself, and saw that both Evan and Ryan had been playing around.
I was giving my warnings about bedtime being bedtime when I noticed Ryan jumping up and down, waving his arms. He bent over and shook his head. When he came up, I knew something was wrong. He was scared and shaking and began to turn blue. "ARE YOU CHOKING!?" I asked, and he shook his head, "YES!" All my training for teaching school kicked in, and I did the Heimlich on little Po, a ROCK shooting out and hitting the opposite wall, loud enough for Auntie Deb to hear it from the other room.
Apparently, Ryan was pretending to be a magician and was balancing a rock on his tongue, with his head tilted back. The rock rolled down his throat, becoming lodged in his trachea. Thankfully, I was there to help and hadn't just yelled down the hall! And, of course, Stephen was on call!!!}
