Derby Days

Caroline had a tough week.  At karate, one of the other mom's gave Caroline a ring that had a big yellow ball on it that flashed different colors from the inside.  She loved it for the entire 3.5 hours that she had it.  Caroline loves having the car windows open, so every Wednesday when she and I drive home from church together, we have the windows open.  Caroline also has a tendency to hang things out of the window.  Stuffed animals, food, papers, you name it, she's tried it.  I've always warned her that if anything fell out of the window I was not going to stop and get it because it was unwise to hang things out of the window.  But in all of her 4-year-old (stubborn) wisdom, she continued to hang things out, which is what happened this week with her ring.  She was hanging her ringed hand out when the ring fell off into the street.  She was sooooooo upset.  "I NEED it, Mommy, I NEED it."  I really felt for her, and considered turning around to get it.  But then I thought if she was ever going to learn the lesson to not hang things out the window, this would be a good toy to do it with.  However, the loss of this ring was felt deeply. If we were back in biblical times, Caroline would have worn sackcloth and ashes for the next couple of days.  On Saturday, we were driving down the same road, saw the ring still in the street near the curb, and Todd stopped to get it for her.  It was a bit dirtier and had lost its flashing lights, so the reunion was not as happy as it could have been, but Todd sure earned some points in her book.

Caroline has been asking to do something just the two of us.  Something that we could do without the boys knowing about it.  So, this Saturday morning, the boys had a Derby Car Work day and while they all went off to do that, she and I had a nice breakfast at Chick-fil-a. 

We sat in the tall seats and had a nice meal together.  There were three little baby girls in the restaurant at the same time, so she gushed over them.  She loves babies.  I almost feel bad she doesn't have a baby sister at home.  She'd be a good big sister.  (Sorry, not sorry.)  Afterwards we went to the store where I proceeded to buy 9 containers of her soy milk.  Got home and realized I had bought "Original," not "Unsweetened."  Our little girl doesn't like any flavor to go with her soy milk...

After re-bagging her soy milk to be taken back to the store, we dropped by the boys' Derby Car Work Day to see them race their cars.  Todd had helped them put weights on their cars as well as the wheels.  Then they had the opportunity to do practice races down the track.


Since the Derby is always held while we're at Awana, we use this as the boys' race day.  They probably raced their cars down the track 50 times.  There was an adult standing at the head of the track just putting the cars on, letting them go, next set on and go, on and go, indefinitely.  Our boys' cars consistently came in 3rd or 4th place.  Some of the dads took the work day very seriously and glued pennies on the car to get them to be exactly 5 oz.  They looked professionally done.  Our boys' cars looked like they had made them and helped put them together which was just fine with us.

pre-wheels

They didn't get upset that theirs didn't win either, they just ran it back to the start line for another race.  I'm sure they'll learn tricks to make them faster as they do this every year, but we'd still like to keep it fun.

We finally got our bricks fixed.  Our front door has had three wooden boards covering up a hole in the brickwork ever since we had the foundation repair over the summer.  Since I very rarely use the front door, and so rarely see the boards, it just sort of got put off.  But we are happy with how it turned out.  Now we have to get the tile repaired inside the house that cracked because of the foundation issues.

before

after (still wet)

The kids had a lot of fun this evening.  We were playing out front, riding bikes and scooters, when the neighbor boy across the street came over.  He's 2.5 and got his tricycle out to ride with our kids.  Then they played with a soccer ball and had a ton of fun chasing each other with the ball.  It was the first time they have played together, but our kids are hoping it'll be a daily occurrence.  It was a good end to the weekend.