Pinewood Derby

Tonight was the Pinewood Derby. Pretty wild, lots of yelling... And the kids were loud too. Here are the pictures.

Isaac and his car.
Here is the line up. There were 12 cars.
The track was borrowed from another Pack in the area. I was a nice two lane track made for some good racing. Isaac had some good runs. When he won he was stoked.

The big winner of the night was.... David. He took the top spot.

For those of you that don't know, David is Isaac's friend that lives up the street here at The Ridges. Isaac invited him to go to scouts in the fall and he joined and has been going ever since.

Isaac's Pinewood Derby Car

Isaac chose a Lamborghini design for his Pinewood Derby car. It took some doing. Lots of gluing, cutting, sanding, painting, and fussing. Here are the pictures.

Random Lexy

Here are some random pictures that Lexy has asked me to post up on the blog.

First is the Cup Castle that she built. Amy and I were getting ready for a date on Saturday night and Lexy was busy building a giant Cup Castle in the kitchen. She then made several Baby Cup Castles to go with it.

If ya know Lexy you know that she is into everything princess... She has taken the dry erase markers that Amy uses to draw out chemical structures on the glass shower and drawn Rapunzel holding a baby. You can tell that it is Rapunzel because of the long hair. In fact the hair is soooo long I couldn't even get it all in the picture.

This one in the kid Rapunzel.
Fun stuff Lexy Jo...

Boats and Ho's... Boats and Ho's...

So, the surprise I mentioned from the Louisville Bat Factory is the just after the kids and I finished the guided part of the tour, we were walking around the display area, I looked up that there was my stepbrother... (Now I use that term loosely, I am not sure it is the right term when you were both grown, gone, married, and had kids of your own when your parents got married.)

He is a great guy, I have known him since high school, and we were in the guard together for my whole career. He is still in, and in fact was in Louisville, KY for an Artillery Fire Support Conference. We took this quick picture and texted it to our parents. They knew that we were both in Kentucky but didn't know exactly where. I don't think that anyone dreamed that we would run into each other. There were about 8 guys from Utah with him, 6 of which I knew, including my old platoon sergaent.


It's crazy how small the world can be sometimes...

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Hey JRuss... I used a page from your book. I figured I better make sure credit is given where credit is due.

Churchill Downs

We went to Churchill Downs while in Louisville. The museum was closed for renovation but we did go on a tour. While we were waiting for the tour to start we snuck into the stands to see the track, while we were in there we took a quick picture of us all with the finish line pole in the back ground.We picked the Back Side Tour. It was an hour long and we got in a van and drove under the track in to the in field. Our guide told us about many different features of the in field. Then we drove under the back stretch of the track to the barn area. There are living quarters on site for single folks that work at the track.

This is one of the race horses. There were about 40 horses on site while we were there. There are 1140 stalls. It is a little early in the season and most of the trainers will move their horses in over the next few weeks.

I thought that the barns looked pretty nice, but our tour guide told us that this one will have hanging ferns and flower pots from April thru July. Each trainer has their own preferences. The Red logo on the wall is for the trainer that is using that barn.
This picture is near the back stretch starting area. We stopped here to see the grand stands together. The middle section with the twin spires in the famous structure at the track. The most expensive box holds 52 people, all inclusive, food, drinks, betting window, for two afternoons for horse racing... $250,000. So, save up so that we can go, it's about $5k a head.

It was a fun tour. Makes you want to go back on a regular race day to check out the racing. It seems to me that their aren't many 'home town' tracks left. It you want the kids to see some horse racing you got to go to a big track. Turn in May 1, 2010 to watch the 136th running of the Kentucky Derby.

Lexy's Routine

This is the video of Lexy's routine at the Louisville competition. Enjoy.

Louisville Slugger Factory

The kids and I took the chance in Louisville to visit a few sites. Poor Amy sat in the car studying. We when to the Louisville Slugger Factory. It's not in the same place it was 22 years ago, it was across the river in Indiana then. Now it's in the heart of downtown 800 West Main Street. It was quite a bit of fun. We watched a movie about baseball for 15 minutes and then off on the tour we went.

Here are the kids standing in front of the Worlds Largest Baseball Bat. This this is about 5 stories tall. It's hard to get a picture of it.
Lexy took some swings in the little kids batting cages. She had a ton of fun trying the different bats. She spent about 15 minutes trying to hit the bulls-eye on the wall.
Isaac did the big boy batting cages. He tried his hand at the 40MPH fast balls. Then he tried the softball side, got some confidence and went back to the fast balls. He hit about 5 out of 10 on that last round.
This didn't mean much to the kids but they are holding a game used Micky Mantle baseball bat. The fellow at the photo station said that is was worth $20k. Pretty cool.
This is Lexy with the same Mickey Mantle bat.

We did go on the factory tour where they were making bats. They didn't allow is to take pictures. We saw bats being made on a latte, on a Hillerich latte, and a CandC machine. We got to see how the bats were cut, turned, sanded, branded, painted and finished. It was fun. In the end we all three walked out with a mini bat.

And, something else pretty cool happened in the Louisville Slugger Factory, it's a pretty cool surprise for another post.

Louisville Skating Competition

We made the trek to Louisville, Kentucky for Lexy to compete ice skating. She was skating in the Basic 3 class and they all skated to the theme song from The Adams Family. Boy, our home ice is nice...!! This place was SOOOO COLD..!! The girls couldn't spend much time in watching the others because the room was 'see your breath' cold. We wrapped up in blankets, sat on pillows and used disposable hand warmers to keep warm while we watched. I kept Lexy wrapped up in her blanket on my lap in between her warm up and skating. Thanks Butch...!!1 You take good care of us.

This is the front of the ice skating rink in the Jefferson / Middleton area of Louisville. Isaac was very happy that we took his skates when there was a second sheet of ice and he skated during the public skating session. He spent the first 15 min of it with no one else on the ice. He ended up skating with two hoodies on, a beenie, and gloves with hand warmers in them.
Lexy had an awesome bun that Amy put in her hair. She also had a nice ribbon that was tied around it to match her dress. The back of her skating dress has a cool little detail on it.
This is Lexy during the competition. She skated well. I'll post the video of it later.
When she was done skating we gave her 3 pink roses. That may have been more of a highlight that the medal. She is all about getting flowers.
Here she is on the podium when she got her 3rd place medal.
I like her pink on pink warm up outfit too.

We had a pretty big weekend. Thanks to Miss Mischa for being Lexy's coach. The Charleston crowd was strong in Louisville. There were a lot of people that we knew there.

I'll post more pictures of our trip through out the week.

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1 Butch is the manager of the South Charleston Memorial Ice Arena. Great guy.

Busy, busy...

We have been living in a tunnel life the last little bit. We have no pictures of it. I have worked late a bunch, and have been hanging out at the house doing a bit of nothing.

The kids have skated a bunch. This weekend is Lexy's skating competition in Louisville. We are headed out early Friday afternoon and staying until Sunday or Monday. We (except Isaac) are all excited. I can't wait to see her compete. I guess we'll have a big report from there.

Clinical Assignment

Amy got her first clinical assignment for when we starts them in May. She is headed to Hazard, Kentucky. We blasted down there today to take a look around and see where she might find a place to live for three months. It is 2.5 hours southwest of our house. She will be working at the ARH Regional Medical Center.

The area is very much still in Appalachia, steep, tight hills every where. Her study-buddy Melanie is going there the same time as Amy. They were thinking about trying to use a travel trailer or and RV to stay in near the hospital. The closest thing we could find was a campground that was about 15 miles away and down a one lane road along the river. Not a good place for two young gals to stay by themselves. I am sure that we will find them a good place to stay. The hospital is affiliated with the University of Kentucky Medical School. We just have to find the intern housing.

Frog

The frogs are out again. Last night we were walking into the house and listening the the strange sound ringing in the night. I said, "Isaac, do you know what that sound is..?"

He looked up at me puzzled, then the lights came on, "FROGS..! Can we catch some." Then we looked down and there was one on the front porch. We grabbed a plastic bottle and he scooped up the little guy. We made him a better container and Isaac had a blast watching him climb the walls and teasing his sister and mom with the frog.

Can-struction

The kids and I have been out of the house as much as possible the last few days. We have mostly done the same ol' same ol' of ice skating. But we also stopped by the Clay Center to see the Can-struction. It is a food drive done by having companies come in a build displays out of cans. Here are a few pics...

This one was my favorite. See the water, it was bottled water. This one in a map of West Virginia.

This is the one that my office did. It had a cordless drill in side making the screwdriver turn.

This one looks like the Seattle Space Needle to me, but is was supposed to be an alien ship. When you look at it from above it looks like crop circles around it.

This one is was the flag ship of the event this year. It was featured in the news papers, etc. After Can-struction we when to the Charleston Coin Show at the Civic Center. Isaac had a lot of fun looking at the rare coins. One fellow even had a stack of about 20 $500 bills and 20 $1,000 bills. Isaac loved those. Lexy was basically just along for the ride. I didn't take any pictures at the coin show. We were the only kids there and I was a bit uncomfortable. I don't think that the folks there would have been too happy with us snapping photos.

Warning

Be careful. This game is addicting. Isaac showed it to me yesterday and I lost like an hour before I realized what was happening. It is fun though. Yes, this game.

There is a quick video of one of Isaac's tracks. The little sled dude goes for a heck of a ride.

Isaac Playing Guitar Hero 5

Isaac thinks that this song is funny. It is in German...




He filmed this with his Flip Video between his knees pointed at the TV. He loves to play Guitar Hero. He doesn't have this one that he was playing. It is his friend David's copy that he is playing for the video. It is pretty loud, be careful.