Beware the SNEEZANATOR!!

Last night was pinewood derby night and it was a big night for Tanner. Last year's car may not have been the fastest but it did get a lot of "wow!" and "cool" reactions from the other boys because he had a star wars lego guy and R2D2 on it. So, this year when I asked him what kind of car he wanted to make without hesitation he said a sneeze powered car. He came up with the concept and design of the car all on his own. So, we borrowed a nose from one of Ella's toys and the top of a pepper shaker, and viola! a sneeze powered car. He said it was the most environmentally friendly car out there. He pretty much made the whole thing himself (I just kind of held his hand when he was using the drill press, chisel, and dremel tool. He even painted it himself. I did put on the wheels right before race time but not much more than that. Looking at it, I thought "oh well, it may not be the fastest but at least he'll get some good reactions." At the weigh in he came in right at 5 ounces. Well, he ended up winning 3 or 4 races and he won first place among the Bears. He was so excited, he couldn't stop grinning. It was very fun to watch him beat some of the other boy's dads. I wonder what he'll come up with next year.

On a side note: Since Tanner's middle name is James, and I don't like Jim or Jimmy, please refer to him as Tanner Jimmer from now on. Thank you.

Make a plate day at Sarah's school (in November, of course!)

Each year at Sarah's preschool, the parent network hosts a make-a-plate event.  The kids each get a paper circle then they send them off the the Makit company and it comes back as a plate with their drawing on it.  They had so much fun using last year's plate that we couldn't miss going again.  

Sarah (doesn't she have a great smile?) did a really colorful abstract piece.

 We traced Mary's hands a few times.

 Ella decided to draw a scene from the ABC show 'Wipeout" complete with the two Johns providing the commentary. (That is a fake cast.  See previous post)

 And Tanner did a battle scene complete with zeppelin.

More of what I would have blogged about....

After seeing that this sweet little baby, her cousin Addy had gotten her ears pierced, Ella asked if she could get hers done.  Since noone had ever asked, Marc and I hadn't really talked about it, but he thought if she was willing to take care of them, that was fine.  So off we went to Claire's...

Here she is before, all smiles...

Here she is right before.  Notice the smile is gone and she could not look more petrified!

 And here she is after...so relieved to have survived!

What I would have blogged about had I blogged in November...

...the Mason Heights Carnival.  Someone from the carnival committee at Tanner and Ella's school approached Marc about putting fake casts on kids during the carnival.  Marc agreed and I was worried that it would be too much at $5 each cast.  The carnival was supposed to run from 11-3.  The volunteers working in that room stopped adding names to the waiting list around 1:30 and Marc didn't put on his last cast until 4:45.  Parents and kids actually waited almost 2 hours after the carnival ended to get a fake cast!  Marc thinks they put on around 275 casts that day.  It was such a roaring success they have asked him to do it at the other elementary school in Mason in February.

 Our kids were the guinea pigs as Marc tried to figure out how to put a cast on so that the kids could slip them off!