Pinewood Derby Fun

Yesterday was Jakob's first ever Cub Scout Pinewood Derby. We really had fun putting together his car. We decided to create the car on the computer first using SketchUp.
The official sized pinewood block we started with:

We first considered the classic door stop design. Nah, too plain...

Jakob loves castles so we started looking at castle designs. Jakob definetly wanted a tower.

Getting rid of aerodynamic advantage altogether...

Homing in on a final design, this one at least had a somewhat curved front...

The final golden concept...

The final product on race day

Here's a quick clip we took off of SportsCenter, highlighting the day's races:

Jakob won the award for "Most Royal". While it's not really about who wins and loses the whole thing, Jakob did win his first heat and fared quite well on the other races; especially when you consider our complete disregard to aerodynamic conventions!

The following image was created using the most advanced time lapse imagery to project Jakob's future first car. Shown as it will appear parked in our front drive in 2016 when Jakob is driver's license eligible!

Sea World (03/17/09 & 03/19/09)

Day 2 and the afternoon of Day 4 was spent at Sea World. It was lots of fun, as always. At first Jakob was disappointed because he didn't get wet at the Dolphin show, but then he got wet at the Shamu show and was drenched on Shipwreck Rapids. After that he was freezing, so he got a new Sea World shirt as a bonus!




Anna was scared about the dolphin show and the Shamu show but in retrospect says she liked them. She was also scared to see the sharks so I improvised and said we would go see some "big fish", which she liked (and which were sharks!). She was also scared to see the Sea Lions so we never made it over there. On the other hand she wasn't scared about touching starfish and riding the Sesame Street rides...consequently Sara had to pretend she wasn't scared about those things either!



Emma loved everything and continues to be little miss personality.

This is what usually happens when we try to get all 3 kids together for a picture (much to Jakob's frustration!)

Jakob seeing how tall he is...

Speaking of Jakob, for the last few months he has been absorbed in the comic strip Calvin & Hobbes and we noticed that he has started adopting some of Calvin's facial expressions and exclamations! What do you think?

USS Midway (03/19/09)

On day 1 of our SanDiego trip we visited the USS Midway Aircraft Carrier museum. It was awesome, with plenty to look at (we spent the whole day there) and almost everything is hands on. We totally recommend it.

You get to explore all the levels of the ship. Lower decks...

The hangar deck, with many cockpits to climb in...

The flight deck had many, many aircraft to examine. It was also insanely windy!

And finally up on the "island" where they "drive" the ship ... (you can spot Jakob in his maroon ASU cap, above the "E")

The view of the flight deck from the "Island": Coronado bridge in the background.

Jakob got to sit in the navigator's seat.

San Diego

New posts from our Spring break trip to San Diego are coming soon!
In the meantime there are a couple new posts below (with retro dates).

Chihuly Glass Exhibition

We went to the Desert Botanical Gardens and saw the Chihuly Glass Exhibition. The glass sculptures would have been cool enough to see by themselves but seeing them incorporated into great landscapes with great plants was even cooler.

Jakob got to try out his new camera ($12 on Woot, can't beat that) and we also took our "new" stroller for a test drive (2 thumbs up).

Talk to the hand!

Arizona is beautiful (and so are our kids).