Pine Wood Derby

Ok. First of all, it's a Pine WOOD Derby, not a Pine BOX Derby. If you call it a Pine Box Derby, the kids roll their eyes and say that would be like driving coffins in a race (ha-ha). A Pine Wood Derby is actually a Boy Scout tradition. Each of the boys is given a block of wood, that they can carve into a car. Then, on a selected day in February, all the Boy Scouts get together and race their cars on a specially-made wooden track. The winners receive all kinds of dap, and the fathers gloat. At the end, it's a pretty good time.

Mike and Kathy Geers came and watched our race, which happened to be at our church. Mike was a super sport: he helped Christopher and John use some of his woodworking equipment to sculpt their cars.

(Above and below) Here were some of the entrants for the race.

It's hard to believe that all of these cars came from a block of wood!

Below, you can see the boys checking in. You wouldn't BELIEVE how specific the entrance requirements are: there is an entire page of requirements!!! The cars have to be under 5 ounces: some of the dads got a little argumentative about whether or not the official Boy Scouts of America scale was correct. See the dad with the power drill in the back? He's adding weight to his son's car to make it weigh more: the idea is to get a car to weigh as much as possible under the limit, because dads believe the car will go faster if they weigh more. Some dads get high-tech, and add weights that you can buy specifically for these cars at hobby stores. Other dads simply tape quarters to the bottom of their son's cars. Other dads spray liquid graphite on the axles. (See what I mean about the intensity of this race. Crazy, huh???)

Notice that I say the DADS do all of this. The dads are super-competitive in this thing. The boys just want to play with their cars.

Below is Den Leader Russ, giving Christopher a special bead for his uniform because this was Christopher's first derby. Russ is a super nice guy. Wouldn't be a bad guy for you to have to get stuck in the woods with for a week without any supplies, either: he even knows how to make his own rope (ha-ha)! Below, Christopher holds-up his car: a replica of the Batmobile. He finished his 3 heats once in 1st place, and two 2nd places. He didn't end-up winning a ribbon. Amazingly, they actually have computer software now to analyze which scout won. Christopher, did, however, win an award for the car with the "best use of black." He was thrilled. Every scout won an award for the look of their car...

John actually did win an award, even though he is not a scout. John was allowed to enter the "Big Kids" division for little brothers of scouts. He was so proud!

Happy Birthday Mom!

HAPPY

BIRTHDAY

MOM!!!

Happy Valentine's Day!

Happy Valentine's Day! We had a good one, a bit early.... Tim gave me these beautiful roses and irises on Saturday, and then we went out by ourselves to a nice dinner at Carabba's (Italian Grill). Even though the wait was long - apparently we weren't the only ones who had the idea of going out to dinner the Saturday night before Valentine's Day - the food was divine!

We were so thankful to Janice Adams, our church's children's director, and Jill Connor, the pre-school director, for organizing a Kids' Night Out. All the moms and dads from church could drop their kids off at the church for 3 hours of free baby-sitting: how great is that?!?! They even fed the kids pizza for dinner, and then played games and showed them movies and did crafts with them. All the children had a blast, and the parents had a wonderful date night. A little piece of Heaven!

Kara

Tim's Sunday School Class

from left to right: Rachel Sweet; John Helms; Sarah, Josh Shaw and their new baby Savannah (Josh is a graduate of Poca High School!); Jenna Sweet, and Tim
After we finished the IMPORTANT and EXCITING and THRILLING Food Pantry Souper Bowl on Sunday morning, Tim's Sunday School class decided to get together because they heard there would be some sort of football game or other on TV (ha-ha). We all got together at Faith and Jeff Mahaffey's house to watch the big game.

Tim's SS class is called Hy-brid because it is a mix of married and single people in their 20's. I don't attend that class - I teach a pre-school class - so I enjoyed getting to meet some of the folks who came. There were only a few people able to make it, but we had a good time chatting and stuff. Faith made this adorable football chocolate cake that was almost too cute the cut!

Our synopsis of the game? The plays were exciting, but the commercials were too crass. We had fun!

The Souper Bowl

Every year, my favorite activity at Clough is the annual Food Pantry Souper Bowl, which takes place from the first Sunday in January until Super Bowl Sunday. During that time, the 8 adult Sunday School classes compete to see who can bring in the most food for our pantry. Then, on Super Bowl Sunday (which we have re-named Souper Bowl Sunday), we do a final count of all the food and announce the winner before everyone goes home to watch that other, far-less important and exciting Super Bowl.... Everyone has a ton of fun, and the food pantry is able to stock itself pretty much for the entire year through that campaign.

This year, Tim Cherry's College and Career Sunday School class played a joke on everyone by bringing all their food in on Souper Bowl Sunday and stacking it up in their classroom door. They posted a note on the door saying that the class would have to meet in the sanctuary, because there was no room for anyone in the room! Humorously, several people in the church actually believed that the entire room was full of food; in reality, though, the food was only in the doorway. Tim Cherry's class won last year's Souper Bowl; they came in 2nd place this year.

To show you how competitive our little contest has become... One of the rules for the Souper Bowl is that if we find expired food in your class's donations, the class is penalized 5 points for each expired food item. To make it harder for Tim Cherry's class to win this year, anonymous people from the church "planted" expired cans of vegetables in Tim's collection box several weeks ago! Poor Tim was the first "coach" (that's what we call our SS teachers during the Souper Bowl) in the history of sports to ever have a negative score at one point, because of all the expired food he had been sabotaged with!

Below is a picture of Kathy and I counting on Sunday morning (Kim Dean also counted, but she is not pictured here). My head was spinning by the time we counted all those boxes and jars and cans! When I began the Souper Bowl campaign last year, I had hoped to get a couple of hundred of food items for the pantry. This year, we accumulated 3,306 items of food in four weeks: AMAZING!!!!

Larry Harrell's Seniors Sunday School class won this year's Souper Bowl. They were SOOOO excited. Here was Larry making his acceptance speech infront of the congregation at the end of the worship service.

This is me with the winning Sunday School class. They win a trophy that they can keep in their class all year, and they win a large breakfast (prepared by yours truly!) next Sunday morning. They don't know it yet, but their classroom will be decorated to the hilt with balloons and streamers, a congratulations banner, and even little football confetti when they come in Sunday morning!

To show you how 'into' this competition our SS classes get, Larry's class has requested a smattering of "cherry" pastries for their breakfast Sunday: cherry strudels, cherry danishes, etc., to gloat over Tim Cherry's College and Career class that they lost this year. (ha-ha)

I'm so glad that we Cincinnatians have SOMETHING to root for on Souper Bowl Sunday. Goodness knows we'll probably never get to root for the Bengals!

Bearing Precious Seed

Our boys' school, Milford Christian Academy, is part of a church that also has a Bible publishing ministry called Bearing Precious Seed. Each February, the school kids get to participate in assembling some Bibles as a school project. This year, the children prepared Bibles (specifically John and Romans) that were going to be sent to Bulgaria. Since parents are always encouraged to come help their kids in this project, Tim came and took some pictures:

The school made 96,000 Bulgarian Bibles over 3 days.

Then, they started on some English-language Bibles.

Our Fairy Princess

Some friends of ours gave Anna a set of princess dress-up items, including a wand, a frilly skirt, a pair of wings, and a pair of shoes. Anna loved the set, wears it all day, every day, and calls herself a "fairy princess." Tim and I are not sure exactly what a fairy princess is, but it involves spinning and jumping around the house, and waving her wand to 'turn people into macaroni and cheese.' Having experienced two boys, this is totally new to us!