In truth, we call it a Family Reunion, but when I hear that word I have visions of blood related strangers sitting around picnic tables having polite conversations wondering how much longer they have to stay. And that is so completely NOT what this past week was.
My family is, as most of you know, kind of...big. At this family reunion, it's Mom and Don. (I would love for someone to develop a word that doesn't bear the negative connotations that stepfather does.. Thank you.) And my seven brothers and sisters and their children and another four person family we've adopted as our own and when it's all said and done, there's about 30 of us present. Ranging in age from 1 to 60something.
We stay at Fort Parker State Park simply because there are group facilities that are absolutely perfect for us - a dining hall, an "old folks" cabin, 4 bunk houses, two bath houses, and a game room. Oh, and our own dock. And a baseball field. And even a cemetery that has ancient tombstones. It is perfect.
Well, this was our third year to congregate in Fort Parker, and what's great about that is we all know what to expect now. We know what to bring, what the kitchen does and does not have, how humid it is and therefore how pointless hair products are, how great a bunkbed feels at midnight, and, most importantly, the layout of the grounds. Because that's how Tammie, The Creator of The Amazing Race, works her magic.
This was our Second Annual Amazing Race. Last year we all ran around like crazies doing things like throwing cheetos at shaving cream covered heads, duct taping young children to backstops, etc. This year was even crazier. There were 22 challenges. It took 2 and a half hours to complete and I never wanted it to end! I've never sweated so hard in my life. Let's see if I can give you some highlights...
- 4 teams of about 5 people each
- Challenge number 1 was using small handheld wooden "alleys" to roll a marble the length of a baseball field. Each team member had one alley and had to roll the marble onto the next person's alley and so on and so forth until it reached the bucket at the end. I'm not gonna lie - my team rocked this challenge, finishing well before the others.
- one of the next challenges was reaching our barefeet into a jello and shaving cream filled baby pool and finding 10 pennies with our toes. It's amazing what talents you discover along the amazing race. Amber discovered she could pick up 3 pennies at a time with her toes!
- another challenge had us slathering the head of the youngest child in peanut butter and then using said head to pick up chex from a bowl. Mason didn't exactly love this challenge. :)
- We had to squeeze a cups full of orange juice and drink it. Refreshing in the middle of everything!
- Use baskets tied to our bottoms to catch balls.
- bounce pencils into cups.
- Toss water balloons with towels, without popping them.
- balance dice on the end of popsicle stick while holding it in your mouth
- find certain cards in the massive graveyard
- guide a blindfolded team mate into a sprinkler sprayed field to find five of our team's colored coins.
- build a four foot tower out of newspaper and tape and make it stand a minute.
The night of the amazing race we also played Capture the Flag. Now, I usually don't play Capture the Flag as I have very vivid memories of my best friend and I getting so into a game during a youth group trip that we were literally fighting, like sand throwing and rolling around in the ground. It just left a bad (and crunchy) taste in my mouth.
I apparently have a competitive streak in me.
Anyway, I decided to play this year. My nephew Adam, the one who just returned from Afghanistan, brought "land mines" and "trip wires" to use in the game. So, in various locations, if you stepped on a land mine, water would (somewhat violently) spray you. Same thing with the trip wire. It definitely added an element to the game. And we were playing in the dark.
Now for those of you who aren't familiar with Capture the Flag, the premise is simple: You try to get the other team's flag. There's a boundary of territories. You get tagged and put in jail. The rest is a little strategy and lots of running. There was only one fleeting moment of near glory for me when I used a moment of distraction for the other team to make a dead sprint for the flag and then just ran like heck toward the green glow sticks that marked our boundary. The bad part about capture the flag is that you have to, first, run to the flag and then run back WITH A HUGE FLAG while being assaulted on all sides by the opposing team who did NOT just run a million miles to get the flag in the first place.
I'm not that fast.
I was tagged. The flag was returned and I was captured.
However, I cleverly distracted their jail guard and flag guard with a conversation about who all we had in our team's jail while I watched troy sneak from out of nowhere, grab their flag, and run like mad to the boundary. So, really, if you think about it, my capture aided my team's victory. Yeah.
We played another round and this time I was in charge of guarding the jail and the flag. It's long, long, long, periods of boredom spent wondering if the game ended and everyone just forgot to tell you , sprinkled with moments of frantic running and tagging and chasing brothers and nephews who run like speedy, darty jack rabbits as you try to keep them from getting the flag or freeing their captive teammates. One game changing moment was when, the enemy, Josh was running full blast, carrying our flag, nothing but a wide open road ahead of him, when, out of nowhere, Mason jumps in front of him and stands his ground as Josh, a 30 year old man, unable to stop his momentum, runs right into him. Flag, boy, and man roll and tumble to the ground. With not a tear shed, the flag is returned and Josh is put in jail and Mason became our MVP.
Capture the Flag was awesome and I was secretly disappointed we didn't get to play again.
Now, you might be wondering how we had the strength and sustenance to do all this crazy activity. Simple - we ate. And ate. And ate. See, we split up the families into "teams" and everyone gets either a dinner or a breakfast and you're responsible for that meal only. So, for my team (mom, don, troy and I) we had a build your own burger bar. I bought as many different toppings as I could think of and each person got a bun and a patty and went from there. It was all kinds of yummy! But the best part? Our meal was the first one so we just ate the rest of the time! Every family is also asked to bring snacks, so there is a constant snack buffet of cookies and puppy chow and homemade granola and cake and all sorts of yumminess. If it weren't for all the sweating during the amazing race, I'm certain we'd all come home 10 pounds heavier.
We also played Baseball, some people fished, we played board games and sat around and talked. The boys went golfing. The ladies took all the kids swimming. We slept in our air conditioned bunk houses and took the best showers of our lives in a campground bathhouse. So many great simple wonderful moments all led up to the final night, The First Annual Talent Show.
Every person was asked to participate in some way. And it was amazing! The younger kids did skits they wrote. My sisters Amy and Christy reinacted the I Love Lucy Episode in the chocolate factory. Mom and Don were Sonny and Cher. Amber spent hours, I'm sure, painting all the different things you'd see in a super Mario Brother's game and she, Josh, Kara, and Mason re-enacted it. Adam wrote a hilarious newscast about our reunion and had some younger kids help him present it. Bekah played the ukelele while I recited Goodnight Moon(we procrastinated a bit and came up with this in the car on the way there.) But the person who stole the show was Grant. The moment he saw the trophy he could win by doing something in the show, his determination was unwavering. He told anyone that would listen, "I'm goin' to win dat trophy." And that's when we came up with this:
You can barely hear it, but he's dancing to "Old Time Rock and Roll" like Tom Cruise did in Risky Business. It was quite a hit! I still can't believe he did it. He's wearing undies and his lightning McQueen Sunglasses. He had a few more "moves" but as you could tell by the hands covering his face, he was a little embarrassed. But when it was done, he looked up at me and said, "Dat was fun!" And then asked, "Did I get the trophy?"
It was such a great week. So many wonderful memories. I would have shared more pictures, but, truthfully, I was too busy enjoying things to photograph much. So, I'll try to steal from everyone else.
Now, I gotta go finish my 9th load of laundry. Seriously. It's a fun, but dirty week. :)
