Game ideas

Since I slaved (and I use that term lightly) away in college for 5- yes, that's right- 5 years getting a degree in RECREATION MANAGEMENT, I thought it ought to be good for something in my everyday life, so years ago I compiled a list of game ideas. I've referred to it a lot throughout the years in hosting birthday parties, kids friends parties, family parties, ward parties, etc. Many times I've been asked for game ideas from friends and family who are having their own parties and need some ideas. So, at the suggestion of Jamie, I decided to do a post with some of my favorites:

**BRING ME THE. . . Form two teams (or more if you have enough people- each team should have at least 5 people) Have each team stand the same distance away from the leader. The leader calls for different items- ie a watch, cash, earring, car keys, lipstick, sock, etc. and the first team to run with the item and hand it to the leader gets one point. Game ends when one team reaches 5 (or whatever) points.

**DO YOU LOVE YOUR NEIGHBOR (for 6-30 people) Have everyone sit in a circle with one person standing in the middle (no seat available for him) He approaches a person and says: "do you love your neighbor?" That person can either say yes or no. If they say no, then the two people on either side of him have to switch spots with the person in the middle trying to get one of their spots, leaving one person w/o a spot- then they're in the middle. If the person says yes, then they add "but I don't love people who. . . " and then fill in the blank with something like: "are wearing jeans, have blue eyes, have braces, are under 12 years old," etc- then whomever that statement applies to, has to get up and change seats with whomever else is switching seats, and the person in the middle tries to get a seat- leaving a new person to be in the middle.

**I HAVE NEVER (for 8-20 people) Everyone sits in the circle. Give everyone ten pieces of something like candy, dimes, pennies, whatever. Someone starts and says "I have never________" and fills in the blank with something they have never done that they think most other people have done. If you have done the thing named, you must throw one piece of candy (coin- whatever you've been given) into the middle of the circle. The next person goes, and so forth. Each time you have done what has been named, you must part with one candy (or whatever) Once your 10 items are gone, you're out of the game. The last person remaining with anything left collects everything in the middle of the circle.

**LETTER GAME (for 15-25 people) Form teams with 5 people to a team. Give each person a set of pre-made letters- one for the front of their body and one for the back. They can be attached with yarn.(which would go over the shoulder holding the two pieces of paper together) The letter on the front is a different letter from the back, so each team has 10 different letters. The letters are: *person 1 has O & E *person 2 has A & Y *person 3 has T & C *person 4 has B & P *person 5 has R & H. Each team has these same letters. Line the teams up with their letters on. The leader calls out a word, and the team must scramble to get their bodies assembled to spell out the word the fastest. Some people may be turned backwards or forwards depending on which letter needs to be used to spell the word. The first team to spell the word gets one point- Play to 10 points (or whatever.) The words to be spelled are: BOAR, RATE, BRAT, CROP, PART, CRAB, PACE, TAPE, BOAT, HATE, TRAP, BEAR, BERT, CRAP, TYPE, BEAT, REAP, HYPE, BART, CARE, PEAR, BARE, HEAP, RACE, CAPE, THEY, TEAR, TARP, THAT, HEAT. As these are only four letter words, one person will be left out of each word. They just stand to the side and wait for the next word.

** M&M GAME- (for 5-10 people- could do more than one team) Everyone sits in a circle or around a table. Each person has a paper cup and a straw. There is a bowl of plain M&M's in the middle of the table. Someone starts rolling two dice. If doubles or 7's are rolled, they take the bowl of M&M's, and as quickly as possible, start sucking one M&M at a time out of the bowl into their paper cup using their straw. The dice continues to be rolled around the circle. When the next person rolls doubles or a 7, they grab the bowl and start getting M&M's. Once the bowl of M&M's is gone, the person with the most M&M's in their paper cup wins!

**MASKING TAPE ON THE NOSE- (8-50 people) Everyone gets a piece of masking tape abt. 2" long. Fold it so that it is in a circle, with the sticky part facing out. Place the piece of tape on the edge of your nose. Each person approaches another person and they touch nose-to-nose letting the 2 pieces of tape touch each other. The tape will come off of one person and stick to the tape on the other person's nose. If the tape comes off yours, you're out. If you now have two pieces of tape on the edge of your nose, you go to someone else who either has one or more pieces on their nose, and touch noses. Continue until everyone has lost their tape and one person has a big glob of tape on the edge of their nose. That person is the winner!

**MUSICAL CANDY- (for 6-20 people) Everyone sits in a circle. A jar of candy is passed around while music is playing. When the music stops, whomever is holding the candy is out. The last person left gets the jar of candy.

**HAVE YOU EVER- (for 8-20 people) Everyone stands in a circle and marks the spot where they start with a shoe, purse- whatever. The leader asks "have you ever" questions (like: "have you ever had your wisdom teeth pulled, slept outside under the stars, thrown up on a train or plane, gotten a speeding ticket", etc) and if you can answer yes, move one spot to your left. You may be standing in the same spot as the person to your left if they didn't move. That's OK. The first person to move all the way around the circle back to their original spot first is the winner.

I hope this list is helpful to you and that my instructions make sense!

Party on!

Summer Fun part 2

Just a few more fun activities we did this summer: We had a fun Weyerts family party at a park one Sunday evening. Stacie did a great job of organizing it. We had yummy food, then played a really fun survivor game. We were divided into four teams. First we had to do a word scramble, then we each had to make our own paper airplane and see who's flew the farthest. Next we had to do a relay race and dress one person on the team in some overalls. Last we had to race back to back with a raw egg between us and try to not drop it. At the end of all that, two teams were tied, so Jessica and Brody had a tie breaker to see who could chew and swallow three starbursts the quickest. Everyone had a great time.

Kylee and Sidnie
Avery
What would a party at the park be without Salomon? (my answer may be different than everyone elses. Don't tell the Hatch's though :)

This is Cam and Jake horsing around in the backyard one Sunday afternoon. Can you guess if one of them got hurt in the process?
Jake got mad one day after being stung by a wasp so he dressed up in this gear and went around swatting and killing a few of the wasps' friends for revenge.


Aunt Gayla turned 80 in August, and wanted to celebrate out to "the ranch" where she and her family lived during the summers while she was growing up. My cousin Scott runs the 4,000 dry farm now, so allowed a bunch of us to decend on him to have a party one Saturday afternoon. We had delicious food, and a nice program. Cam got a ride with Scott on a tractor that drove itself! Pretty cool for a city boy. He also learned what a combine does, and got to see how wheat is grown. Cam was a good sport to accompany me as everyone else had other commitments for the day. I enjoyed visiting with relatives I don't get to see very often.

We had another fun party at a park when the Lakes were here. Ann and all her kids, plus our family, the Searles and Mom met at Von's Park (not Romney) in Providence for dinner and a fun survivor game hosted by Jamie. Luckily none of the food items we had to get down were too disgusting.

Cam struggling through the ropes course
Jessica with her two favorite Lake girls!

Jessica, Jake, Mike and I went to Rupert one friday in July to attend Sydney and Adam's engagement open house. Before the party, we drove to Twin Falls to attend the open house of the temple. It was small but pretty. We're glad we made the effort to do that. This makes Jessica's third temple open house (San Diego and Mt. Timp) and Jakes second. (Mt. Timp) Cam missed out cause he was at Scout Camp.

We loved being at Syd and Adam's fun party and to their awesome wedding in SLC the next weekend. They're such an adorable and fun couple.
We celebrated Kylee's 21st birthday with a cookout, badminton, and cards. I loved that it was on a Sunday (even though she didn't) because we got to spend more time with her and Brody than we would have any other day!

Sadly, summer is over, and we're now back in school. Isn't it true that all good things come to an end? But there's great things about the fall that we love, so we'll just wait for more summer fun in '09!

I love my blog

As it's been almost 6 months since I started this blog, I thought I would take a moment and give some thoughts and feelings about it. I have been very surprised at how easily I learned how to upload the pictures and write and post what I want. I have loved having topics come so easily to my mind when I think about doing a post. I love reading the blogs of those family and friends on my sidebar. But mostly I have loved the feedback I get from you- my loyal readers on the comment section below each post. For those of you who read and NEVER comment- shame on you! That's all I'll say about that. For those who are regular commenters, THANK YOU! (here's a shout out to my most regular commenter: KYLEE, with close seconds from Lindsey, Ann, Jamie, and Von.) To those of you whom I haven't heard from lately -(you know who you are) I've missed you! I have been surprised and happy with the occasional comment (or once only) from cousin Susan, best college friend Diane, bro-in-law Trace, Alyssa Hoffman Foust, Nichole Frost Nuttall, and Ann's best high school friend Joyce. I was also happy the other night to receive a message on my answering machine from my Aunt Lorna saying she had checked out my blog and how much she enjoyed it. That made my day! I love how we as sisters, cousins, nieces, friends, daughters, aunts, sisters-in-law, etc. can stay connected this way and find out about each others lives when we wouldn't otherwise as regularly.

Here's to the next 6 months!

Three out of four accomplished

I had four things I wanted to do this summer before school started. I got three out of four done- and the reason I didn't get the fourth done is really out of my control. First off, I wanted to finish typing my '07 history, do the cover page, and get it bound for us and each of the kids. This is the first year we've done our own as the 27 year tradition of doing a Griffin one has gone by the way-side. I'm so excited with how they turned out and can't wait to have this tradition carry on with just our family. I typed a broad history detailing everyone's activities, then asked each person a three page survey (questions like: 3 favorite TV shows, favorite foods, 3 goals for the year etc) that I included with a picture page for each child and several of the family. I'm going to copy the Skeens trivia game idea and play it on Christmas Eve with the questions coming from the history. I'm so excited!
My second goal was to update a years worth of the boys' sports in their very simple sports scrapbook that I've been keeping for them ever since they started playing sports. I love that they have it all in one book (well, Cam now has two) and you can see how they've changed from year to year. It's awesome.
Number three was to do a high school scrapbook for Kylee. When she graduated three years ago, I wasn't a confident scrapbooker, so when Lindsey volunteered to do one for her, I was thrilled. She did such a great job, and that book is a real treasure. However, Kylee still had lots of pictures from high school just laying around. This spring I got brave and did a 45 page high school scrapbook for Jessica that turned out so darn cute (if I don't say so my darned self!) Then I felt bad that I didn't do one for Kylee, so she gathered all her pictures for me, and I got that done a month ago (in a weeks time!). It's pretty darn cute too! The last thing I wanted to get done was get some curtains for our guest room, game room, and possibly the family room. Since I need help with that from the master seamstress Freda, and she's been busy traveling and helping lots with the Nelsons, that will have to be something I'll hope for in the coming weeks- months- next year? These last two months with everything done, it's been nice to have time to relax in the afternoon at the pool or with a good book.
This last picture isn't of anything I accomplished, it's just a picture of the new bookcase I bought that looks pretty awesome in my living room. I don't know how that wall survived without it there all these years! Thanks to Lindsey's find, I was able to buy it half price at a darling store in Ogden called Real Deals, so even though I had to drive down and pick it up, it was totally worth it! I LOVE it.

Apricots anyone?

We are so happy to have three awesome fruit trees in our backyard. We have an apricot, pear and apple tree. This year we have had more apricots than ever. I spent about 45 minutes this morning picking 6 buckets of them. I never have any trouble giving them away once I've used as much as I want. Some years I make jam- although it's not our favorite flavor. This year I tried some in a smoothie, and yummy- so I'm enclosing the recipe in case any of you get your hands on mine or someone else's apricots! To freeze them, I just rinsed, cut in half, took the pit out, and froze for a few hours on a cookie sheet. I'll store them in a zip lock baggie for future use.

APRICOT SMOOTHIE

4-5 whole apricots

1 banana

1/2-3/4 c vanilla yogurt

1 1/2 c fruit juice (i used white grape peach)

Mix in blender

(I use this same recipe to make a strawberry smoothie using frozen strawberries!)

Camping fun

We've been trying all summer to find a free weekend so we could do one of our favorite family activities- camping. We finally found one! Sadly, Brody couldn't get Saturday off work, so couldn't join us. We really missed having him there. We invited the Bundy's to join us, and as always they added much to the fun. They scouted out a great camping spot for us at Northfork in Liberty. It was the perfect, quiet spot. We set out getting set up as soon as we arrived Friday evening. Mike worked on the dutch oven dinner and tent set-up, while Ryan chopped some firewood and as soon as we were set up waiting for dinner to cook, some enjoyed a fun card game. Ann and Emma arrived at dinner time to enjoy the delicious meal with us, then Ann took Emma back to sleep at her house while the rest of us enjoyed an awesome fireside chat, s'mores and roasted starbursts. Mike retired to bed about 11 while the rest of us played a wicked game of "scum" until 12:30. The next morning we relaxed, played games, went for a hike, and ate a big breakfast of bacon, eggs, and blueberry muffins. (Emma joined us for the days activities which we all loved) We packed up and headed to Causy Reservoir for some swimming and cliff jumping. We all (except for Linny and Emma) jumped off a 25' cliff. Sadly the camera didn't capture my jump because I took a few seconds too long to go. . . Kylee showed the most courage in jumping and said she was only able to finally do it because we were starting to get mad at her for taking so long! She was very scared and we were all proud of her. Jake did a jump of about 35' as we were leaving, but sadly I couldn't get to the camera because I was in the water. It was a very nice day weather-wise which we were so grateful for because thunderstorms had been in the forecast. We headed to Huntsville for a fun picnic, playing on the playground and visiting, then headed home about 5:30. We had such a fun time and can't wait for our next camping opportunity.