Start Your Engines!

My family is very invovled in the AWANA program at our church. This year J is in Cubbies (the 3-4 year old program), N is in Sparks (grades K-3) & B is in Truth & Training (grades 4-6). My hubby is a leader with T&T while I am the secretary for the Cubbies & Sparks groups. We all have a good time with it.

Today we had our Awana Grand Prix which is a pine wood derby race. All of my boys had a great time making their cars. In fact, I had such a good time helping J, that at the very last minute I bought myself a car kit & made one as well. I think you can probably tell just by looking which one is mine. ::wink::


Left to right: J's car, N's car (he made all by himself, B's car - actually it's a "Lego space shuttle", my hubby's car which he completely whittled in to a whale shape & named "Jonah's Folly" & then my "bling" car.

The whole day is very well run. I did take quite a few photos, but there are a lot of other church members & such in the photos so you'll have to content yourselves with just my guys.

The race track is set up off in the corner of the gym & blocked off with ribbon. One of my jobs today was to be sure the kids didn't go in when they weren't suppose to or walk over the track either. We didn't want them to fall and either hurt themselves or break the track. This kept me rather busy.

There were four racers each race & everyone raced four times. Then all their times were averaged out to find the winners of the speed category. Before the races started all the cars were also judged by impartial judges (i.e. they weren't related to anyone who was racing that day) for best design in each group as well.

There is an electronic gate at the end that records the track times. Last year the track record was broken three times. I'm not sure anyone managed to do that this year. Some of the leaders have been racing for a long time and have made some pretty fast cars!

Even though each group only competes against themselves in the end for the trophies, they do race against anyone during the course of the race. At one point my two oldest raced at the same time so I was able to get this photo of them together. My hubby & I raced at the same time as well (I won too!). However, at the end when the trophies are handed out for speed & design they do them by group (Cubbies, Sparks, T&T, Leaders & "Others" - an open category for anyone in the church).

Here is a shot of the cars all lined up in the pit crew. That is where my hubby worked this year. They are kept hopping during the whole race getting the cars ready to go - weighing, drilling out lead, etc. & putting up the cars that are on deck & retrieving those that have raced.

And the final results...everyone but myself won a trophy! Don't you feel a tad bit bad for me? ::wink:: N won 2nd for speed in Sparks, B won 3rd in speed for T&T, J won 3rd in design for Cubbies, & my hubby won 1st in design for the Leaders.

I know they all had a great time & I know we'll be racing again next year. Perhaps I'll just be the official photographer next year. ::grin:: Oh & if you'd like to see some more really creative car designs, click here to go to my Project 365 blog.