Pack Night - Pinewood Derby

Tonight was Pack Night and once again, Heather is in charge of this once-a-year event where we have the pinewood derby (this will be our third). We went over to the church on Monday with the Blom family (primary pres and YM pres) to setup the room and put the track together when we discovered that the track, which is normally stored in the upstairs attic, was missing. So I put on my detective hat and started calling everyone I could think of to find out where it went (it was there a few days ago). I called the Bishop, 1st Councilor, Ward Mission Leader, Activities committee, two High Councilman, both English and Spanish speaking missionaries, and two other wards/branches that have access to our building. I then checked the outdoor shed, and the dumpster all with no results. Also missing is all the wood we use every year for our booths for the Christmas party. I suspect we may never know who cleaned up the attic. So Bro. Blom (who is very handy with tools as a profession) committed to make a new track by the next night. Let's just say he had to spend all day building it and we cut it pretty close.

I got the honor of performing the announcing (hey, give me a mic and I'll make John Madden proud!) and I was also responsible for tracking the cars and rounds with a program I found on the web which calculates the lanes and who goes when etc. We got ready to start the racing when the alarm bells started going off in the church and smoke started billowing out of the Kitchen. They decided to heat up those large pretzels for the concessions stand and there was something that burned on the oven heating element causing the smoke. So I got to call the fire dispatch and try and cancel it (the fire engines showed up, but they were updated by dispatch and left). After that, the event went off very well and once again, Heather did an excellent job of organizing and running the event. I keep telling myself that this stuff gets easier once you do it more than once, but I'm just humoring myself to keep sane.... : )

The three winners for the race.