Sibling Dinner

So, for the next couple months I think I'm gonna be playing catchup with my blog...

Back in March, during our visit to AZ, one of the activities I had planned was a Sibling Dinner. It was a blast and when we come to visit in November, I plan to put together another one. We found babysitters for each of our children and then met at my Mom and Dad's for a night without our little bundles of joy. We made shish ka bobs for dinner and then enjoyed playing games. 

The lighting at my parents house is terribly yellow and my camera doesn't know how to compensate for the over-warmness of its hue, but you can still sense the energy we had that night. 

So, my family is VERY competitive with one another, not that that's the best thing in the world, but did did make for a fun time while we played the trivia game I came up with. The game made the night a little long by the time dinner was over, cleaned up and finished, but there were lots of laughs and smiles. (And next time for dinner, we'll order out to save on setup/cleanup and eating time) 

Thank you to Rachel for taking most of the pictures that night while I was up being the one in charge).

On the wall, you can see the trivia game. The orange rectangles are the categories and the blue papers show the point value of the category. The categories I had were: Dates (where you had to remember siblings birthday's, parents anniversary, etc), Memories (where you had to recall the end of a story from something that had happened to someone in the family), Names (remembering In-laws middle names, or middle names of nieces or nephews), Events (remembering something about a specific event or activity that our family did), In-Laws (this was facts about the in-laws that may have been easy to little known--I wanted to give them a brake from our hard questions), Mick Sibs (facts about our own siblings, like how many times Ruth broke her arm in Kindergarten, etc), Movies/Songs (popular movie or song quotes our family grew up reminiscing on).We had the teams to be boys vs. girls since there would the same amount on each side after factorying in the in-laws. Also after each question, whoever one got a bag of goodies with candies, and fun trinket toys (though that incentive didn't seem necessary as we got going).

I'm forgetting some of it now, but we played another game of physical challenges as well.

 The first challenge we had (we don't have pictures of even half the challenges), was between Ruth and Dallin. The challenge was to see how many crackers they could eat in a set amount of time. Ruth was pretty let down because she had just got braces put on and eating anything was difficult, but she was up to the challenge.

 Next, David and I had the challenge to see who could sit on the green ball the longest with out any part of our body touching the ground. David won by a long shot.

 I can't remember the category for this one, but my mom and Kevin were given the challenge to write all the books of scripture in the Bible.

  (I'm not sure where the picture of my mom went here...)

Another challenge was when Vaughn and Larry stood on their heads.

 And Karri and Kindra did the scripture game challenge where I asked them trivia-like scripture questions.

 And my dad and Kindra had 30 seconds to construct a paper airplane and whosever went further won.

 And Karri and Kurtis balanced a broomstick on two fingers. Karry took that one... (I guess Kurtis needs more practice with a broom)

 April about peed her pants when her and Vaughn were set up to put pillows in their shirts and see who could know each other over. (You see, I wouldn't read or let the teams know until they were up there, what challenge they'd be doing).

 Kindra and Dallin had 30 seconds to build the tallest building from cardboard blocks.

 Rachel and David had to leg-wrestle.

 My mom had a dance off with Blake (my mom didn't want to stop after the music ended).

 

 Overall, it may have been most fun for me because I was the one in charge and I let everyone know while explaining the rules that if there were ever a dispute that I had the last say in the matter. heheheh... though, I think the others had a good time too, including, Vaughn, who was very skeptical of the nights plan leading up to the games.

After some of the games I had in mind, Blake showed us this game where you get in a garbage bag, and put a vaccuum inside. After turning on the vaccuum for about 10 seconds the subject is like vaccuum sealed inside. I did not try it, but it sounded like an unexplainable amount of pressure at every spot on your body.

So, Mickelson Fam, hope you're all up to another night of games, challenges and fun when I come in November, but know, this time, there is no mercy. The challenges are getting more tricky!

And to you Ellsworth's, I would love to be invited to something like this for your family, but the planning has to be done by someone in the "know"--in other words, not an in-law.