I'm mad right now! I am very competitive, especially when matched against my husband. While in Richmond, we split into teams and had ourselves a little adventure. A photo scavenger hunt. It was more fun than I have had in a very long time, and I am thrilled that I enjoyed it--because sometimes I struggle to stay engaged in 'fun' activities with the kids. I tend to get bored easily or more often than not, incredibly anxious; especially when there are a lot of people around. I have a hard time letting go and just enjoying time with my family. It isn't intentional...it is just how I am. I do not relax easily. Thus it is very difficult for me to really have FUN with the kids. I don't like to be touched (yeah yeah yeah I know--I have four kids but that's different and I'm not explaining it to you!)...so being in places with a lot of people crowded around puts me on edge.
I can say that my team, Pink Lightening, won the first level. We finished just one item ahead of the other team! We each got to choose our own dessert that night, while Fast Thunder had to share their dessert. Here are pictures of our respective teams.I guess I will back up a bit and explain how we came up with the idea for our 1st Annual Bishop Family Scavenger Hunt. I was just looking back through and realized that I hadn't actually told you about our scavenger hunt and adventures in Richmond, Virginia last Thursday. I wish I could take credit for the idea of having a photo scavenger hunt but it is not a new invention. The resort we stayed at had a few scavenger hunts throughout the week. The first day we did an ABC version, where we found items on the resort that started with the letters from A-Z. It was OK. Not as fun as I had hoped but it kept the kids engaged for a little while. We read in the activity guide that on Thursday they were having a picture scavenger hunt and we were actually excited about that!
When we picked up the list on Thursday we were quite disappointed. We THOUGHT we would get a list of items we would have to find and photograph. That sounded cool to us. What we got was a list of PICTURES taken on the resort that you had to go around and find. This could have been interesting, had we stayed at the resort that day, but we already had plans to drive to Richmond for the day, and honestly it just wasn't what we had in mind.
So being as technologically advanced as I am (I'm not seriously gloating here-so for those of you that don't know me well, simmer down), I pulled out my laptop while we were driving to Richmond, connected to my phone's internet and Googled 'scavenger hunt ideas'. I decided we would just make up our own list and our own rules. We took some suggestions from the kids and combined that with some things I found online, and I added a couple of my own (i.e. something funny and something weird/unusual). We ended up with 25 items to look for and photograph. As Kris and I discussed it more, we decided to add a little competition and divide into teams. This left us with one big problem! We only had one digital camera. Well, we had no other choice. We had to find a Walmart. And then we had to buy the cheapest (but 'decent' quality) digital camera we could find.
Katherine and Kaleb were team captains. They got to choose their teams and come up with a team name. The teams were Pink Lightning (comprised of me, Kaleb and Olivia) and Fast Thunder (comprised of Kris, Katherine and Abbey). I can't write too much about it right now, because Kris has FORBID it, and because the 'judging' is still going on, so we wouldn't want anyone to be biased towards one team. We each had our own notebook with our 'list' and so we set off on the scavenger hunt. In the back of our minds, we knew there would be two levels of winning. The first level would be "First team to finish" and the second level would be "Team with the best pictures".
Fast Thunder
Pink Lightning
Now comes the part where I need YOUR help. Yes YOU. If you are reading this (and you have a Facebook account) you can help us judge the pictures. My brilliant husband designed yet another little Facebook application that allowed him to put the team pictures side by side (in random order so you don't know whose picture you are voting for). You just click the picture that you think best represents the idea/item on the list. You can't put too much stock into the quality of the picture, as one team had a higher-quality camera. We came up with our own captions as well. So if you want to get in on the voting/judging, just click this link:
Right now, Fast Thunder is KILLING Pink Lightning and I am NOT happy about it. AT ALL. In fact, I'm angry. I do not think that some of their pictures truly represent the item...and their justification for some of their items is just absolutely ridiculous. Now I know that they feel the same way about some of ours...but still! 47 people so far have voted on the pictures (I LOVE ALL OF YOU GUYS!!!) and Fast Thunder is leading with 594 to our piddly 504. Are you recent voters insane???? I don't like to lose! But I suppose fair is fair. You won't know who most of the pictures belong to, so it is really the best way to judge who won.
The voting will run until the end of the month. We wanted to give people plenty of time to login to their Facebook accounts (for those who only long in once every couple of weeks!), and keep the sometimes-not-so-friendly competition alive! At the beginning of April we will post the winning team with their pictures on Facebook, and I will take that opportunity to justify why I think some of Pink Lightning's pictures should have won via my blog. Yes, I am already accepting defeat. I am not sure how we can come back from our current position.
And we finally decided on a prize. We are going to buy a picture frame and create a certificate that has both teams on it, the year and place of the scavenger hunt, as well as a picture of the winning team holding first place ribbons. And each year we will continue to do this. We have begun a new tradition and everyone is very excited about it. It will be exciting to plan for it and gear everyone up for next year. We don't even know where we will be going for vacation next year, but the scavenger hunt will be a MUST! I highly recommend this to anyone who is looking for something fun to do with your family. And if you are on Facebook and want to utilize my husband's application, I think he can tailor it to suit your needs. Just let me know if you are interested.
Oh and if you want to look me up go here: http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?ref=profile&id=1274451426
Just send me a message to tell me that you read about this on my blog so I know who you are!
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