Pinewood Derby and Chili cook off

I was able to put together another successful ward pinewood derby event. I think the kids had a lot of fun and combined with the chili cookoff… It was a rootin’ tootin’ good time!

The kids really did do a great job and we’re so creative this year. We only spent one day working on them together and then they were meant to finish the cars at home.

Our friends — Val and Stephen Wells won a category or two during the chili cook off!

Looks like Petrice won most chill chill!

Grandma Doreen won one of the prizes for her chili that she cooked up.  grandma and grandpa Platt were in town to watch the kids while Ben Cael and myself would be going to New Zealand the next day!

Here is the outlaw race with Ben’s car in the middle the blue toy car with a dumbbell on the top proved to be victorious in the end thanks to inertia and gravity!

These boys were so excited about watching their cars race down on the track!

I told Cael he needed to dress up for the pinewood derby, and he decided to come in his purple Cambodia suit. He was a judge at the finish line for a little while and then all of a sudden he was gone. I think he had some other things to do that night, but came to the church for dinner before heading out.

Someone told us a trick for chili cook off is to bring a muffin tin so that you can sample all the different chilies without getting too much of one of them. It really is a genius idea and Ben loved his dinner that night.

Brielle wanted to make these cute little dessert Teddy Graham Twinkie race cars!! They didn’t last very long

Cute brother Hernaez made some amazing trophies at our first pinewood derby and he really outdid himself this year for our first second and third place categories

Also, another category not pictured was our outlaw races. There wasn’t any rules for these cars. They just needed to go down the track.

Ben took a toy car that I had brought as a decoration and loaded it down with weights in on the inside and he won the outlaw category with his crazy car!

We didn’t mean to, but the Platt family almost had a clean sweep of all the trophies

Brielle won the young women races first place 

Connor won  the young men race

And Ben won the outlaw first place trophy!

And grandma won a prize for the chili cook off!!

It is always a bit stressful hosting such a complicated activity with the races, checking the cars in, making sure that they’re on the right table, making sure that they’re getting announced, making sure the right person gets put in the spreadsheet and that the car is race on different tracks 3 different times…

On top of that to have the chili cook off and have the judges deciding, which one is the best in making those announcements and giving out those prizes!

I learned a lot from the first Pinewood Derby that I needed to delegate out some of the portions and even then when someone told me they were going to be doing the speaker and providing the music, they dropped the ball. Can you believe that? Thankfully, I brought our speaker from home just in case and it’s a good thing I did because music really sets the tone for an activity like this.

I’m really glad that it worked out and everyone seemed to have a great time!