For The Boys

The Six Tiger's Cars


Nathan With His Trophy

The King Racing

The King and Inspiration (Design Chosen by Nathan)

Last weekend our resident Tiger Cub participated in his first Pinewood Derby. It was a THREE HOUR PLUS event with lots of tiny details and procedures to follow. It made for a long day for an inconsistently napping two-year-old who also went to church and celebrated her 2nd birthday the same day. The four-year-old sister was crabby due to the rationing of snacks by a very strict "Cub Scout Snack Guard" and the parents were crabby just because sometimes long events with three children at almost the end of a long weekend about to be even longer by a squeezed in birthday celebration can make parents crabby.

However, all of the crabbiness was overshadowed by our own very enthusiastic Tiger Cub. He was so excited about his car (which a certain engineer dad may or may not have carefully researched and spent several weekends and evenings working on both with and without his little Tiger helper). We were very proud of our little guy. Before we even left for the Derby, he said something along the lines of, "It's okay if I don't get first place or second place. It is even okay if I come in last. I'll still have fun, right?" Wise beyond his years...

Engineer Dad came through and Nathan won first place in his den and his car was in the race off at the end with all of the older scouts. Most of the older boys really loved Nathan's car and he was so excited to have so many friends cheering for his car. It really was a lot of fun and the crabby sisters perked up once the chains were removed from the snack table.

Dad was less than thrilled about how long it has taken for this event to be properly documented on the blog, but life just hasn't slowed down since.

After one little miss turned two, the other little miss spent several days home from school with a nasty cold. All 3 were home on Thursday for parent/teacher conferences and the weekend was filled with friends (35 friends to be exact). We had a "We Live In Belgium So We Can't Properly Watch the Superbowl, But Let's Have A Party on Saturday Night Anyway" at our house with 16 kids and their parents. It was a lot of fun, WAY too much food, and very little football.

Dad has made his way to an actual Superbowl watching party with the guys tonight. Yes, he already knows the outcome and it probably seems slightly odd to those of you who could watch the game at a reasonable hour to watch it more than 24 hours after the event, but welcome to our world.

I did learn that one of Nathan's classmates stayed up to watch the whole thing last night and then came to school a bit late and left a bit early. Our little monkeys were asleep before the pregame even started and we parents didn't even make it to the kickoff! Can we still consider ourselves football fans? Americans even? Well, we do. We're just practical and sleepy.