Scouting

Last week a big week for the scouts.

Trey had his first Pine Wood Derby.  Trey was excited about it, this event gives me a rash.  We are not handy, this is a burden to us.

Luckily about a year ago, Trey's friend Trajen and his family all wanted to make Pinewood Derby cars, they invited Trey to join them.  Luckily Trey had his car mostly made. I purposely didn't finish it, so he would be excited to finish it when racing time came. The car was cut out and painted, we just needed to add weights and wheels.  I thought this would be the year, we didn't have a terrible car.  I did research on how to have a decent car.

It was still an epic fail.  Trey's car was dead last each time.  He got the "Flat Tire Award" a bag of Hostess chocolate donuts.  Trey raced only against his Wolf pack, which was only 2 other cars.  It turned out one of the boys in his pack that he raced against came in first place and won the entire Stake Pine Wood Derby.  Maybe if he had different competition he would have had a better chance.  Trey took it pretty well. I think I was more frustrated.  I'm so over this Pine Wood Derby thing.  This was my fifth one.

Derek's Scout troop had been working on the Winter Sports merit badge.  They had originally tried to make their own snow shoes out of PVC pipe, but that ended up being a total bust. They went up to Flagstaff  and rented snow shoes at the Nordic village, a much easier solution.  It was a successful trip and they loved it.  They had originally planned to go up the prior week.  Flagstaff got a huge snow storm, but it was too much, the roads were bad and ADOT was requiring chains or 4x4 neither of which these desert rat leaders owned.  So the trip was postponed a week, which actually worked out great.  Derek was sick the prior week and would have missed it anyway, by now the snow conditions were perfect for this activity and everyone had a great time. One kid, Parker, had cancer in his leg last year.  Because of his treatments and surgeries, he wasn't able to snow shoe, so they pulled him along on a sled which just added to the adventure and fun.