Ryley’s school, Building Blocks Academy, held their 2nd annual Father’s Day boxcar derby today.  Last year’s race brought a little success for both Josh and Ryley, each winning at least one race on the day.  Similar to the cars last year, Ryley and I started with a pretty basic car kit (one of two or three designs offered by the school) and I transformed it into something a little more stylish, much to her delight.

Ryley’s job was mainly to paint & decorate it.  Originally she told me that she wanted some stripes on it, so I helped her put some nice purple racing stripes from the front to the back.  Then I let her loose with the pink, and she covered them up!  The kids are asked what their car names are before their races, Ryley’s ended up being called “Pinkaroo” for obvious reasons!  (Better than the Pepto-mobile…”!)

There were lots of other cars ready to race…

…and Ryley ‘patiently’ waited for her turn.

Finally, Ryley’s turn had come – she gave her car to the teacher when her name was called and waited for her first race to begin, which we won!  Only by a hair, though, the other dad didn’t seem too impressed by the call.  (Some get a little competitive as you can well imagine!)  On to race #2, in which we didn’t fare as well – spoiler alert – the car closest to the camera below ended up winning the whole thing, so at least we were beat out by a champion!

Zoom!  We got third in the second race and thus were entitled to race one more time for 5th place or something like that, which we lost (but only by a little bit!).

All in all we had some fun, Ryley loved her little pink car and we look forward to next year’s race!