First EVER Speed Award!

Today's post was going to be about our week at VBS, swimming lessons, and our little tadpoles that are all growing up, but those things will have to wait!!

In a surprising, out-of-the-blue, and new TRADITION STARTING event for the Gercken family,
JOSHUA GERCKEN WON A SPEED AWARD AT A CUB SCOUT RACE!!!

As most of you know, the Gerckens are known for well-designed and executed plans for Pinewood Derby cars and Raingutter Regatta boats, but have been lacking in the element of speed.
That's all changed as of today.

From today on, the Gerckens are known for cool designs AND speed!!!

Joshua's theme for this year's entry was Shark Week (insert Discovery channel trademark here). The boats were catamaran-style and he came up with an awesome plan of making his floaty-parts (technical term I use) into sharks. Spray paint, enamel model paint, and even a cut-up hotel room key card (dorsal fins) and he ended up with this:

Yep. Awesome.

Fun morning and a great way to start the weekend! We were really debating whether or not to participate this year because we were all soooo tired after a long week of work and VBS. In the end we decided that we had committed to it and should follow through. Turned out to be a good lesson. :)
We started off with some songs by the always-awesome Miss Kate.

Had a little break to watch the firemen go out on a call. (the Regatta is held behind our local fire station.)

Then got down to work.

We felt pretty confident he would come home with another design award to add to the MANY other design awards members of the family have won over the years. But little did we know, that kid had LUNGS. A little bit of coaching from dad...

and he blew

and blew

and blew

and blew

his way into 3rd place in the Pack!

Out of 33 kids who were entered to race!

And, yes, here he is getting his award for his shark design. Called it. :)

Have a good weekend--check back tomorrow for the rest of the weekly update.