Family Reunion--It was Pretty Amazing!

Nearly the entire family. There were eight people who couldn't be there.

Our family reunion ended a couple of weeks ago, but can I say one thing--it was AMAZING! After our lovely weekend activities filled with family dinners, family games, family photographs, and a special family testimony meeting, we began Monday morning participating in The Amazing Race!

Our large family was divided into four groups. Carol was my group's lead driver and Daniel was our "spiritual adviser" who knew where we were supposed to go and handed out the next clue at each location. When I got my hair cut after the reunion, my stylist was extremely interested in this activity. In case you are looking for an idea for your upcoming reunion (or church activity) here are some of the highlights.

We started off the race by running to our cars. Now, I know this will be hard to believe but I hurt my left thigh the first two running steps I took. I don't know what I did, but it hurt. I was very frustrated because I work out at least five days a week and this should not be happening to me. I limped my way to the car and despite my pokiness, our car was the first out of the parking lot. We headed to the local high school where we had to run AGAIN to the 50 yard line of the football field and build a pyramid.

Carol and I refrained from pyramid building because of our bad backs. Once our picture was taken, we were back running (or in my case, limping) to our next location.

We had to pose like statue.

We had to find a particular ceramic mushroom.

We had to drive a long ways up into the foothills and feed carrots to deer.

We had to continue driving a long way to the other side of the hills to find certain artwork at a garden nursery.

We had to drive back over those same curvy mountain roads to a Jelly Belly Outlet and buy and eat the NASTIEST jelly beans you could imagine.

Jalapeno pepper anyone? How about vomit?

One unfortunate teenage niece actually threw up after this challenge. My sister Barbara was so car sick from the mountain roads that she got a pass. Everyone else had to eat at least two nasty beans. Emily claims she ate two honking handfuls to spare the little boys on her team.

Wasn't that thoughtful of her?

We had to race to an A&W restaurant and get two gallon jugs of root beer and take them to the Taco Bell a couple of miles away.

Each team member was required to order one or two burritos or tacos from the dollar menu. We told the poor order taker that "This is for here. We'll pick up our order inside."

As you can imagine, the first car got the strangest looks, but by the time the third and fourth groups came through, they hardly blinked an eyelash.

We then had to drink our root beer and eat our tacos/burritos as QUICKLY as possible before we could get back into our cars and head towards our next destination.

Joie was taking this challenge seriously--very, very seriously!

I only ordered one burrito. I was still the last one to finish. :( I am not good at eating quickly as my family and dear friends know.

We were nearing the end our our race. We completed a couple of challenges at the San Juan Bautista mission before ending up at our ultimate destination--our reunion campground.


Our Amazing Race was a lot of fun! It was a great way to build family unity and have a lot of fun!