Pinewood Derby

Some of my racing fans




My Grandpa Dale and I made my Pinewood Derby car while we were in Arizona. My favorite part about making it was using the belt sander. There was a thick sand belt that spins super fast. I held the front of my car on the belt sander and I made my hood super smooth. You couldn't really feel any bumps. My second favorite part was painting it. At the hobby store we bought blue spray paint and shiny spray paint. We did it in the back yard so we didn't have the house painted a new color. I stood about a foot away from the car and sprayed it. My extra weights we spray painted shiny silver to make it look like real metal. Putting the weights in was kind of hard but we got it to weigh exactly 5 ounces, no more, no less. It looked awesome! I had a super fun time doing this with my Grandpa.

My car was in the first race and when the stick that held it in place was supposed to go down, it misfired and knocked my car off the track, down 4 feet or so to the ground. It dented in my wheel and killed my fin. The people in charge checked it out and said it was just fine. We didn't realize until all of the races were over that my car was damaged. Pretty dumb. I didn't place but that's okay. I'm planning on making my car look like a boat next year. It'll probably be simple and I actually might win. We looked on the computer and saw that somebody won 3 races by making their car look like a boat. The only hard part is probably going to be putting the weights in. We'll see. I could change my mind.

The Gingerbread Train

In my class at school I did a gingerbread train to represent the Polar Express. To make everything stick we had to put frosting underneath. Then we put all the decorations on. I thought the best part of the train was that I made a snowman out of marshmallows, one pretzel stick, and one chocolate chip. It was a little bit fun making the train, but more fun to just look at it.

Cross Country

My first practice for cross country was horrifying. I had no idea that we had to run two entire laps around the field. I felt like I was going to die. A couple practices later I got used to it. My second meet I hated. Apparently I forgot the way to go on the course. I skipped a part of the course and had to go back. I seriously would have gotten under fifth place. My friend Simon got first place in two meets. Once, he got first place at our school and he got first at another school. For the most part I did have a lot of fun doing cross country.

Cake Decorating Contest

For my cake decorating contest at Scouts I wanted to do a camping cake because I love camping so much. We thought it would be very creative if we made trees out of giant pretzel sticks and ice cream cones covered with green frosting and green coconut. I thought it was really funny that we put goldfish in blue jello and a teddy bear fishing for it. I thought my firepit was really cool. We put giant pretzel sticks on the ground for benches and my fire was made out of regular sized pretzel sticks with orange-colored coconut. My rocks were jelly beans. The scouts (teddy grahms) were roasting marshmallows on toothpicks, made from a bigger marshmallow that we cut pieces off of to make mini marshmallows. I had a fun time making this cake. My award was "The Most Professional". Most people thought that my mom had done it all but I did a ton of the work.

A trip to Canada

When I went to Canada I got to go on a ferry boat by the San Juan Islands. While on the ferry boat I saw killer whales. It was a really nice experience to see one out in the ocean, besides Sea World.

We went to the Victoria Butterly Garden to see lots of different kinds of butterflies.
A butterfly landed on my head and my wrist.

My little sister was scared to death of all the butterflies flying around her.




My brother Camden had one land on his wrist, too.
There was a moth in the garden that was bigger than my hand. It was called an Atlas Moth. It had cocoons hanging above it.












The next place we went to was the Victoria Bug Zoo. It was really crazy there. They let you hold REALLY weird bugs.
This is me touching an Emperor Scorpion. They wouldn't let me hold it because it is very fragile.














One night by the hotel when we were down by the harbor there was a street performer. He did some really cool stuff like juggling a chain saw with 2 flaming torches and fit his entire body through a tennis racquet with no net while balancing a golf club on his chin. After that he wanted a hug and made my dad give him a hug. So then he told my dad to come up and another guy to help him.


The first thing the guy did with my dad and the other guy up there was make the other guy lay down so he could walk over him while juggling flaming torches with lighter fluid all around him.He made it over without burning the guy!

After he did that he told my dad and the other guy to hold up a unicycle so he could get up on the unicycle.

When he was up he told my dad to light three torches and throw them to him one by one. After a while he had my dad throw with him really fast! It was so awesome and I thought my dad was pretty good without any practice! When he was done performing he held out his hat on his unicycle so we could put Canadian money in it. I put in a twonie and Londyn and Camden put in loonies. My dad gave him a couple dollars too. That was just about the best part of the entire trip!

Scout Camp

Since I just turned 8 years old I got to go to Scout Camp. The first day I was late and I got to do fewer activities than everybody else. (They said since we registered so late they didn't have room and then called us the day of after it had been going to a couple hours and said to come down.) The second day I was on time and my favorite activity was b-b gunning. I shot a cup that was REALLY small and I made my own target. I put a cup in the middle for a bullseye and I shot it once. The b-b was in the cup. I was just about 50 feet away. Not bad for my first time. The third day my favorite activity was archery because they didn't have guns. I wasn't that good at archery because the target was too high. My second favorite activity was parachutes with balls.
I made my own gumball machine (sanded it, painted it)

Summer Swimming Lessons, Indoor

It all started out in class: Beginner 1. At first I was trying to pull out some moves to show off and I could do backstroke and crawl stroke pretty good. I was just about the best in my class. For the second session of swimming lessons I got bumped up to Beginner 3. There are two activities that you can do at the end of class, ropeswing and diving board. Every morning you have to go to the shed to get flippers and a kickboard. I am more confident with flippers and kickboard than swimming without them. We learned surface dives, underwater swimming, and breath-holding (I was pretty good at that). Most of the time I took zero breaths. I've been having lots of fun at summer swimming lessons - indoor.
My mom took this picture of me today just before I did a backflip off the diving board. Everyone in my class was like "wow that was so cool!" and they all gave me high-fives.
Someday I want to be like my teacher and do a backflip off the ropeswing. Now that was awesome!