The Amazing “Great Waite” Race

This year for Dustin’s family’s family reunion we went to Island Park. I had never been there before, it is beautiful! Very buggy (not annoying but literally buggy, bugs EVERYWHERE). Dustin’s sister and bother-in-law, Nicole and Jeremy, put together an Amazing Race activity for everyone. I was SO impressed, they thought of everything and so much planning and hard work went into it. Here is a play by play.. sort of….

The night before the race we made team flags and Nicole and Jeremy got each team, team shirts.

Team Pogopalooza: Ang, Kelsey, Keith and Braxton, who had, had enough team bonding and wanted to go play.

Team Mak Attack: Lauren, Bert, Zach and Makelle, who colored the red letters all by herself!

Team Princess Leia y Los Wookies (I will give you 1 guess who come up with that name): Dustin, Josh, Jackson, Linda

Team Walkie Jabbas: Matt, Angie, Kaley and Preston (who also was overwhelmed by all the team unity and had to go play)

RACE DAY!

Blue team, Princess Leia y Los Wookies, not to be mistaken by this picture, Jackson is the least feminine little boy I know.

Orange Team, Mak Attack. I don’t know if Makelle was trying to have an intimidating face or just didn’t want to take another picture but it totally worked! Too bad Bert just looks tired.

Team Walkie Jabbas BOO YAH, you know you would be intimidated, even if Preston’s mask is a little large and his eye brows are through the eye holes.

Braxton’s reaction to us in this picture sums up how all the kids felt about our costumes, confused and scared! (If you are confused on who we are trying to be, look up the Jabba Walkies on youtube, you will be impressed.)

Voted cutest team picture, goes well with their performance….cute.

Group picture: Yellow=Walkie Jabbas Orange=Mak Attack Green=Pogopalooza Pink=Grand Poobah (also known as Dustin’s grandma Jeri Lu Nelson) Blue=Princess Leia y Los Wookies White=Referees ( Layla 8 months old, Parker 2 years old, Camden 5 months old, Jeremy 20 somethin years old and Nicole 20 somethin years old, hum?)

LET THE GAMES BEGIN!

Challenge 1: Group challenge, pour the water OVER your head into the next cup the children can turn around to pour, fill to the line in the bucket.

Walkie Jabba’s strategy, worked like a charm! Finished 1st, Preston was the MVP of this challenge didn’t spill 1 drop of water, just when I was pouring like an idiot.

Princess Leia y Los Wookies strategy.. Not so much, Jackson was trying to get the dirt out of the water, Josh was trying to show off his muscly legs and Linda was pouring the water onto the ground the whole time. (to her defense “someone supposedly, accidently kicked their white bucket on their way to get the next clue”)

Mak Attack strategy: Nice thinking, if only Zach and Lauren would stop giggling maybe they would have caught more water in their cups

Pogopalooza strategy, Maybe would have worked if Keith and Ang would have poured the water anywhere else but on themselves!

*(sorry for the next part of lack of pictures and lots of words, we were all a little busy competing so there weren’t many pictures. As for the words part this is mostly for Dustin and I so we can look back and remember how funny this experience was!)

Once you finished you had to move to the next step. Each team picked someone to do all the physical challenges, logic challenges and brain challenges, the kids each had challenges too. The brain challenge was next, answer questions, answer 1 correct you move on, answer wrong you have to answer 2 in a row. I was a little worried when Matt said that the Coliseum was in Greece, but he recovered. Next was the physical challenge 50 jump ropes, run to a weird octopus on the end of a stick spin 10 times and hit 5 critters (right up my alley, easy!). Off to the the Logic you had 7 shapes and they all had to fit inside a larger shape, there was only 1 way. Grand Poobah was in charge of checking things off, don’t let this sweet face fool you..

She made the 8 year old Braxton move away  from the puzzle so he couldn’t cheat, Angie had it but one shape was overlapping and she didn’t let her pass. Way to go Grandma stick to your guns! Poor Lauren couldn’t figure it out, had to take a 3 minute penalty to get some help.

After that was passed you moved on to the kid challenge, bowling, knock over all 10 pins. Preston was a champ 3 tries all down!

Then you had to run and get the next clue, which said something like drive southeast (how the heck are we supposed to know which way southeast is in Idaho in the middle of no where, I just learned this last year North, South, East and West in Utah, where I have lived my whole life). We drove and got to another brains challenge.

Traffic jam, get the red lego out of the traffic jam (there is an ap for that) sorry hard to explain. Matt killed it. Get the next clue, drive northwest blah blah.. We got way turned around! (at this point my team is winning pretty good) The Blue team followed us ha ha suckers!

We finally figure it out and start the next physical challenge, find the cone, done, (has a hole in the top like all cones do) go to the lake and fill up the cone, crap, (getting harder), run the water up the beach, ( feels like 4 billion yards) and fill the HUGE bucket to the second line. I put the first load in, great, (this is going to take 6 1/2 hours). Jeremy agreed and the ref kindly said fill to the first line. By this time other teams are starting to show up, it was seriously like a Biggest Loser challenge. I wanted to give up, throw up and have someone bring me an oxygen mask, I could tell that Josh, Zach and Kelsey were feeling the same way so I kept going.

FINALLY finished, took the heavy bucket up a hill, curse you Nicole and Jeremy, to our next kid challenge, find your name in the weeds stand by it and throw 5 critters into the bucket, Preston did awesome throwing 2 at a time to instantly get 4 critters, just one more, he winds up throws it like he is pitching in the majors, goes 20 feet too far next one same thing, all of us “Preston soft”, like slow motion he throws it, hits the rim, balances on the side and falls in. We were off!

Back to the cabin, find Grand Poobah to get the next clue, we are the first ones there, searching and running around like crazy people trying to find her, the others start coming, I tell Preston “look for grandma” he comes running in and says “I found her she is in my car!” I go running out to see the blue team showing up, which consists of Preston’s grandma, Linda, who we are NOT looking for. In comes the orange team, out goes the orange team, in comes the green team, out goes the green team, in comes the blue team out goes the blue team. At this point I wanted to swear.  Finally Angie finds her sitting between the bed and her wall. I still don’t know who to blame for checking, or should I say not checking, the upstairs,

At this point we are all pretty even. Out to a field to get more and more clues on where we need to go next. After a few minutes of searching we find that Lauren is figuring everything out, everyone starts following her, (we all found a new side to Lauren, she was literally SCREAMING at Bert to run and help her.) every team but orange gets a 3 minute penalty. Poo. Now it is a race I start running I turn around and yell at Matt “PICK HIM UP!” (referring to Preston).

On to the last logic challenge, a riddle, the whole lion goat and hay thing…Also hard to explain. Lauren figures it out first (orange team) Angie is next (Yellow team) Dustin is next…kinda… He probably told Grand Poobah 6 different options and finally pulled it off. Ang got it before Dustin figured out how to talk.

We were off to a ropes course  had to answer questions right and follow the rope to the right answer, one question was where is the largest waterfall, New Zealand or  Venezuela, Matt and I at the same time said opposite answers, Angie said Bert would know so we followed him. We were neck and neck with orange, we all start running for the finish line, except Zach he was running in the opposite direction to get Parker (the 2 year old ref) for a reason that no one knows still, now is our chance, Lauren screaming at Bert to run again, Matt (holding Preston), Angie and I all get to the finish line.

WE ARE THE CHAMPIONS! (I paid the ref’s, I knew Zach would follow Parker hence us crossing the finish line first). 

The Standings are Walkie Jabbas 1st, Mak Attack 2nd, Pogopalooza 3rd and Princess Leia y Los Wookies 4th.

It was SO much fun, thank you so much Nicole and Jeremy for awesome memories and all the hard work!