Pinewood Derby: Scouts and Outlaws

Friday was our ward Pinewood Derby. Not the REAL Pinewood Derby, mind you, it's just us regular adults who think it's still fun to make the cars for a ward activity. The guys get to relive their scouting days, and the girls (along with the non-scouting guys) get to experience it themselves. Of course our wards version of the derby is a far cry from the real yearly event.

The rules:
1. You must use the car kit provided.
2. There is NO weight limit
3. Even though you must use the kit provided, you don't have to use it the way it's intended. If you want to use other wheels you could just glue the included wheels somewhere on the car.

This is the third year of our ward "derby" and we've made a car for each year. The first year we paid tribute to The King with this car.

Last year they had a theme for the derby, it was "Scriptures". So we thought hard, and Jeff stayed up most of the night carving this car we called "Lehi's Dream Machine". It was pretty awesome and won us a ribbon for "Keeping most with the theme".

This year the theme was "Primary Songs". Visions of a popcorn covered car filled my mind. We considered putting Pres. Monson on a car and adding the words "Eat my dust", for Follow the Prophet. I nearly made a black car with the words "Elder Derby" serving in the Pinewood mission. But after looking through the Children's Songbook I found the perfect song and ended up with this car.


If you can't guess the song, then you need get your behind back in Primary and brush up on the old standards.
This year for the derby they decided to make two categories of cars. The regulation weight "Scout" cars, and the "Outlaw" cars that went over weight. We were obviously an outlaw car, those rocks were actually pretty heavy!
The derby was a lot of fun and altough we didn't win any awards for speed (one of the wheels didn't really turn because of a little accident with some super glue) we came away with another ribbon for "Most Clever".
Here's us watching the derby.


We were stuffing our faces soon after these pictures were taken with all the yummy "finger foods" we all were supposed to bring. But there were suspiciously more families there than there were foods. Hmmmmmmmmmmm.
Jeff had a ride along and left the derby early, so we hitched a ride home with our friends who have a 15 seater van, no joke.
Jeff's ride along went really well and he went "hand's on" for the first time. Meaning the first time he put hands on a civilian while on duty (not during a practice at the academy). He busted out with a Number 3 wristlock on the guy and was able to keep the guy from getting into a fight during a heated argument.
Graduation is coming up soon for Jeff and we are all very excited to have the Academy behind us. He's allowed to have 2 people come up and pin his badge on during the graduation ceremony, so Rome and Capri will do the honors. It should be very cute if they don't chicken out.