A sense of.....

I may not be able to beat the world record for being able to hold my breath the longest or by creating the biggest cookie but I can say that I currently* hold the record for fastest track time at the People at Play abridged course, hucked a rainboot the farthest in the women's division at a casual work picnic, and was reigning Pinewood Derby champion in 1996. Each of these ridiculous accomplishments will stand out in my mind the most as the greater achievements in my life (along with eating an entire half gallon of ice cream in one sitting), more so than winning any paper certificates for great efforts in science, math, or reading in high school and more so than becoming volunteer of the month at the local science museum. Who can say with pride that they are able to toss a boot pretty far? Who can say that they know how to operate an Excavator adequately well enough to ring a large tire around a post, bowl a spare using a sideswiping motion with the bucket, fill up two buckets with dirt, lightly knock a soccer ball into the bucket using the teeth of the machine and then slowly slide the ball into another bin, and knock tennis balls off of orange traffic cones? Who can say that they built a super fast Pinewood Derby car (and painted it sparkly red) and beat out all the boys when they were only 6 years old? To me these are immense achievements and I am very proud to say that I can and have done these things.

Back story:

Today I went with several of the G.WIZ! Summer camp staff to the People at Play in Bradenton and learned how to operate an Excavator, utilizing both its brute strength and finesse to complete an obstacle course in record time. It was super fun! We had to wear hard hats (pink!) and safety vests (orange!). 7 of us total. It was definitely worth waking up at 7am on a Saturday. An experience of a lifetime, I highly recommend it, although the price might not be up your alley (upwards of $300?).

Cool story written by my daddy
(cool because it's about me, etc)

100yrs ago, Rachel had her first pinewood derby contest.  She had seen the event when her sister D'ariel had done it and she told me she wanted to "win the big trophy".  I can't remember exactly what I said, but I did try and downplay her expectations a bit.  I had explained that you can either make a fast car or a car that looked cool and could win a prize that way (D'ariel had won a prize for the way her car looked).  Since the "big trophy" was the fastest car she naturally wanted to make a fast car.  I knew there were some serious families competing (multi-sibling winners, etc)(a couple of Dad's even build there own racetrack to perfect the car prior to race day)(the Dad's actually had their own race with cars they had made after the kids were all done).  Anyway the car turned out relatively blah looking and I didn't hold out much hope for speed (D'ariel's car didn't even make it across the finish line - it stopped part way down the flat part of the track)(and they re-ran it several times to see if her car just had a fluke run - nope it never crossed the finish line!).

So Rachel wins her first heat.  And then keeps winning and - you guessed it - she ended up being the fastest car in the room.  Beat out about 100 other cars and won the big trophy!  I was shocked.  Rachel, age 6 or 7, took it all in stride.  When all these other kids came up to congratulate her she always said, "Thanks.  And you did well too."  When the Dad's came up and asked her how she did it, she replied, "we asked for a fast block of wood" (which was actually true when we bought our kit) ...