Second Annual Conestoga Branch Pinewood Derby!

Well, I can't believe it's been a year since the last Conestoga Branch Pinewood Derby. I got the idea from Brad Belcher, my father in law, last year as an idea to help all men in the ward have an activity. He said from his experiences with an adult pinewood derby it worked great. So, we tried it last year and it went pretty well. Thus, we tried it again this year and I have to say it was a great success. We had lots of people out to participate and quite a few less actives as well. I think the best part of it all was getting to work on the cars with my boys and others.
One evening while I was helping a group get started on their cars Porter asked me if he could make on. I said, "Of course!" He then decided he wanted a ninja turtle car. At first that kind of worried me because Porter has a tendency to get upset if something (art work) doesn't turn out the way he thinks it should; but I agreed and started by just drawing a ninja turtle outline on the block of wood. That passed his approval; I passed the first test. I put off the carving part for a couple of days because I wasn't sure how I was going to pull off making a block of wood look like a turtle that Porter would actually like. Finally, a couple days later after Porter continued to ask if we were going to work on his car I decided to give it a try. After a couple hours in the garage a turtle emerged from the wood and I thought it looked pretty good. I quickly cleaned up my mess then ran upstairs back into the apartment. I excitedly showed the car to Porter and to my relief and excitement he thought it was awesome. We then spent the next hour working together on the paint job. One might not believe it, but Porter painted probably 80% of the car. He did a great job. I was impressed. He has a good eye for detail and an relentless desire for perfection.
It was pretty fun to listen to Porter and his excitement for his car. For the next couple of days he kept asking me when the derby was going to be followed by "My turtles going to win!" I was excited for him too, but then the thought came to me; "what if he doesn't win? How's he going to handle it?" We had some great talks about winning isn't everything and how he might act if his car doesn't win. He seemed to understand that it would be ok if he didn't win.
The Derby day came and Porter, Craig, Erin, Peyton, and I all went to the church early to get everything set up. We set up the gym but we couldn't find the track. We made some calls and found out the track was in a closet on the stage. To our surprise the closet was locked. I was pretty worried, because the only key I had was to the clerks office and it didn't even work because they changed all the locks on the doors recently. We started to worry a little. I thought I better at least try my key, just in case. To my surprise the door unlocked and we were able to get the track out. I tried my key in other doors and sure enought it didn't work in any lock I tried. I felt pretty blessed.
We got everything ready to go; track, food, awards, etc. People began to show and Craig became our MC. The races began and to my surprise Porter's car did really well. He won his pool without a loss. So, his car moved onto the championship bracket. He made it all the way to the finals without a loss. I began to think that he might have a chance of winning. He was pretty proud of his car too. He raced his good friends car in the semi finals and won. It was so cute to see his friend come up and congratulate Porter and tell him he did a good job. (Of course that won Kane the sportmanship award. Well deserved!) Anyway, Porter's car ended up getting second place and to my relief Porter was still very happy and went and cogratulated Mark Stewart. I was pretty proud of him. He still won a award...the most creative design. It was a ton of fun and everyone had a great time. The car is below.