Pinewood Derby 2009

Pete and Sam had fun at this year's Pinewood Derby.  Dad helped set up the track, and get the cars weighed in.  Pete's car weighed in exactly at 5.0, so no adjustments were needed.  

Below are the cars in Pete's group.  Pete's is the orange one at the top:

Pete's basketball game was over just in time for him to watch the races for his Bear Den.

Sam also got to race in the sibling race.  His is pictured below - it has the same orange color as Pete's.  Note his name on the projection in the background.

Special Delivery

Above is apparently what happens when you leave a used FedEx box lying around in the same room as a plastic pointing finger and Sam.

Christian The Bear

Christian is a bear. Children take turns bringing him home for a week at a time from Sam's pre-school. Sam brought him home last week.

Christian likes to brush his teeth and read a poem called "Teddy Bear, Teddy Bear". He also enjoyed meeting Billy, a bear that Sam got from Grandmom who looks a lot like Christian.

Dad created a webpage for Christian. Hopefully the other kids in Sam's class will enjoy looking at the page. More importantly, Dad hopes that the boys can use this as a general web site template for future uses and for learning about HTML and building basic web pages.

Museum of Odd Chicken Nuggets

When Sam grows up, if his first business idea doesn't work out perhaps he can open a Museum of Odd Chicken Nuggets.  His latest additions are the state of Virginia and the Millenium Falcon.  And don't forget devil chicken from last year.

Special Person Night

Sam invited Dad to "Special Person Night" at Celebration Pre-School. They had a good time.

Dad got to wear a tie that Sam made for him.

Then Dad and Sam worked on a gingerbread house. Dad worked on the foundation, while Sam worked on eating a lot of candy. If you look at the picture of the finished house, you may observe a problematic situation that occurred:

As you can see, the candy cane back door of the house was left open, which allowed the Mike & Ike burglar to gain entry. The police marshmallows arrived with skittles guns drawn, so we were hopeful that they would bring the entire situation to a peaceful resolution. The good news is that, by the next day, Sam had eaten away the problem.

Bear Badge

Congratulations to Pete for achieving his Bear badge last night at cub scouts.  This means that he has completed all of the required achievements for year 3 of cub scouting.  He can still continue to do more achievements through the remainder of the school year to attain belt loops or beads for his uniform.

After his meeting last night, Pete also attended an optional basketball practice.  He is glad he attended, since he got a good workout.  The other two people at the practice were the two coaches sons.  So Pete got a lot of good practice and coaching.  Also, his team is currently undefeated at 6-0.

Pete Learning About Programming #2

Pete was reading in his Guinness Book of World Records about a guy who typed the numbers from 1 to 1,000,000 (with one finger!).  Pete asked Dad what the guy was holding in the picture.  It was a manual typewriter.  Pete asked Dad why he didn't use a computer.  Dad told Pete that anyone could use a computer to type the numbers from 1 to 1,000,000 in a matter of seconds.  Pete asked Dad to tell him how to make a computer do that.  They discussed that there are several ways to do it.

You can click here to see a sample page Dad created to show to Pete.  Warning: depending on the speed of your computer, it might take a few seconds to a minute for the page to display the numbers.  Let Pete know if you see any mistakes in the numbers on the page.

The PTA at Pete's school is doing a program this year called After-school Enrichment.  Pete was going to sign up for the computer class, but it is geared more for the younger kids.  He decided to sign up for the Chess and JumpRopeTricks sessions, both of which are starting soon.

Pete Learning About Programming #1

Pete asked Dad if he could show him how to edit his Blogger template to show his favorite posts.  Dad said it involved directly editing some complicated HTML, but Pete said he wanted to learn so Dad showed Pete how to do it.  Since then, Pete has made several edits to his template.

You can see the sidebar, including Pete's favorite posts section, here.

Ice Skating

Pete and Sam had a fun family outing on Sunday, when the family went skating at the Ashburn Ice House.  It was essentially the first time ice skating for both Pete and Sam.  Pete did really well.  Sam counted a few times while Pete and Dad raced around the rink.  Pete also went "inside the cones" and learned some jumps and spins.  Sam also was able to skate by himself, without too much trouble.

After skating, everyone had some pizza at Pomodoro's and watched Spongebob.

The family decided not to bring the camera, so here is a random picture from Google of a family ice skating:

Except Sam didn't have a walker, and of course Pete and Sam were not wearing any gloves or jackets.