Family Weekend

Tonight Karen was home for dinner, and we made french bread white-sauce pizza with chicken and pineapple, with hot fudge sundaes for dessert. Between dinner and dessert came work on our Pinewood Derby cars, which will race down the track tomorrow; all we have left to do is lubricate the wheels, which will have to wait for morning because we can't find our tube of graphite.

I'm trying to keep Danny from getting his hopes too high. He was last year's runaway winner in the local pack, and third place in his age group in the regional races. It was all a matter of luck. From what I have been able to tell, winning has more to do with axle smoothness and wheel alignment than with car design or, well, just about anything else, and making a Pinewood Derby car is not exactly precision machining. I'll just be happy if the boys' cars make it down the track through seven or eight races with the wheels intact.

Of course, the most important thing is for the scouts to have fun, and if last year's event is any indication, there will be plenty of fun to go around. And anyway, it's someone else's turn to be the winner. Karen will be with us, having actually gotten the weekend off. There's work to do at home, of course, but we will find the time for fun as well.

This week brought report cards. William's report was even better than we expected. He's really flourishing in school this year, to the point of having been invited to the morning Math Club by his teacher, which is a honor reserved only for student who excel not only at math, but at their other work as well. We are very proud.

Danny still has some work to do, but we're very proud of him, too. He's gone from actually crying at having to read to someone who reads for fun, even reminding us of Grandma Pat, who often went around reading the signs around her aloud. And Danny is also very adept at math.

So my boys are doing well. I'm not saying it's all smooth sailing—it would be almost scary if they behaved all the time at eight and ten—but it's nice to see them making the effort.

And it's especially nice when all four of us are together for the weekend. It's all too rare a treat.