Race Day!
Our church has a Grand Prix with little pine cars. The three boys all had fun designs in mind. LP wanted a car shaped like a Lamborghini Guillardo. He drew the shape out on the block of wood and I cut it out for him. He sanded and painted everything himself. Half-Pint had a favourite HotWheels car - a '65 Mustang - that he wanted done, but it HAD to be blue with a red stripe. So it was. He painted it all, with a little masking tape applied by an overseeing parent to keep the lines straight!
Brother KP went a bit off the chart with his. He wanted a wedge. Well, a wedge-shaped car. And green - it had to be green... with a stripe. Orange - no, a red stripe. No, maybe white, or black. Two stripes - but blue. He finally settled on two stripes in orange. He was told to quickly paint the car before he changed his mind again!
With cars done, we arrived at the church on race day. Brother KP's car was fast. As in "the FASTEST!" His car never lost a race all morning, and he went home with the big trophy. He was quite pleased. His mother beamed with pride. (Maybe 'beamed' isn't quite the right word, but she was happy for him.)
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| The Pine Car Raceway - complete with photo finish gate at the finish line |
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| The winning car and the trophy |
Random Happenings
Brother KP scored his first goal of the season last weekend. A nice shot from the hash marks of the face-off circle into the far corner of the net. Perhaps a lucky shot, but he'll take it! (He's #15 for the orange team - the Flyers.)
Deer feeders in the field aren't seeing much use. I haven't had very much free time to get out hunting. By the looks of my schedule I may only get 5 - 6 more days out until the season is over.
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| You can tell no deer are eating the bait when there are sprouts growing out of it! |
Here is a lovely picture of a proud pigeon hunter. Big Bill and Andy got out for some pigeon shooting at Farmer Bloomfield's. I think the final count was 6 birds. All of the cattle were unharmed!
Dinner With Friends
We went to Special K's house for a dinner party a couple of weeks ago. I don't have any pictures of the people invited, the lovely decorations around the house or anything like that. I do have a picture of the pan of dessert that Nate was serving up. First you have to note the quartered pan. It was enough to serve four but the girls got all fussy about wanting some as well. Anyhow, four equal portions was out, so Plan B was to serve up small samples of the snack.
It really is difficult to remove squares out of the middle without causing cosmetic damage to the surrounding icing. But you're not dealing with amateurs here. Nate's skill really shone through.
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| Note the names on the quarters of the dessert. Can't understand why the women-folk protested... |
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| The dessert did not come off the fork and flipper / scooper thing very nicely. |
With the pieces of the dessert so deftly removed we needed to entertain ourselves a bit more. Nate and I decided to test our drop accuracy and the impact resistance of the dessert at the same time. This is what our findings were:
Accuracy - 3' drop test: 90%
Impact resistance - 3' drop test: 40%
The base of the dessert remained intact, although the rotation during the drop turned it upside down. We feel that had it landed right side up there would have been more splatter from the topping. As it was, the topping clearly separated from the cake-layer base. More testing is required to perfect our technique.
Flavour was not affected in any way whatsoever. Multiple tastings proved our initial results to be correct!
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| This is what the dessert looks like when it hits the plate when dropped from a height of 3 feet! |
A Hanging Bed
I built a hanging bed for LP. It's basic design would resemble a drawbridge that doesn't touch the ground and the end. It's about 21/2 feet off the ground. It has a little desk area for him to do school work at, too. Here are a couple of pictures of the result.
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| Almost done, just have to add some trim to the base and maybe some stain or something. |
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| I think he's pretending to do homework in this picture. I remember faking that pose myself years ago! |
Oh, one more thing....
I saw this hand sanitizer dispenser mounted to a wall in a new building we were doing some work on. It must have just been put up because the painters were just a little further down the hall finishing the walls and trim.
Note the lovely name plate mounted backwards on the wall.
Fail.
