Saturday, July 21, 2012

Family Olympics

For a summer Primary (church kids group) activity, our presidency wanted something everyone in the family could do, and something involving water. So for July we combined a water gun/balloon war with a "Family Olympics", composed of picnic games and Minute-to-Win-It games. It was pretty fun. 

Each person chose a country to represent, and colored that flag on a name tag. We wore the soccer jerseys Dave bought on his mission and played for Brazil. Here Dave stacks 6 dice on a Popsicle stick in his mouth.


Here Dave put Vaseline on his nose, and transferred as many cotton balls as he could from one plate to another in one minute. When I saw only one other child in Jessica's age category had attempted the cotton ball game, I coached her through it, and she took the "bronze" medal.



I also did the 3-legged race with Jessica, as well as with Ashley Bonney. We biffed it on our first try, but we took the bronze when we tried again. I also lost the water-balloon toss, but it was just fun.


There was also a really hard game with ping pongs balls that I couldn't complete, and Dave kept cheating to finish. You strap a tissue box to your back, add 10 ping pong balls, and time how long it takes to shake them out. It's a real calorie burner and spectator sport. We also had a team Cheetos-and-shaving-cream-on-the-head toss, gallons of water for keeping cool, and a tug of war, for which I was on the losing team three times.



The very competitive Leech family, with only 1 child, still won the most medals, and the grand prize: a chocolate Olympic cake made by our Primary president, the amazing Kristina Randolph. We brought home several silver and bronze medals (made from salt dough), and a fun memory. I loved the activity because it didn't require too much planning, clean-up, and there was lots of help, so it wasn't stressful. It geared us up to watch the 2012 London Summer Olympics.

Saturday, July 14, 2012

Boring Update

Sorry I haven't posted recently; I've been hunting for a new house to rent. (Our landlords lost their job and we are trying to accommodate them and find a new home a month or so before our Oct. 1 contract ends.)

I also tried to play bumper cars with my car, which totaled my PT Cruiser. It was low impact; no one was hurt. But we had to deal with that; we bought a 2009 black Mazda 5, which I love.

And, we lost power late on June 29 due to the multi-state durecho (straight-line high windstorm), which no one saw coming. We and millions of others were out of electricity for days during a heat wave. They originally estimated we'd be out of power for 8 days, but for us it was only 4. We didn't have a lot of fridge food to lose, and got by with battery-powered fans and borrowing electricity from Dave's car battery via the inverter (Florida hurricanes did teach us something), and driving to places with AC & power.

I have pictures, but getting them off my phone is a task, and this is all I have time for. If I don't post again for a while, it's cause we moving and accompanying Dave on his business trip to TX (early August). We love you all!

Wednesday, July 4, 2012

Fourth of July at the Shorter's

The Shorter family invited us over for July 4th dinner and backyard fireworks with the Sample and Lovelace families. More captions to come.