The Amazing Race - An Amazing Event

Saturday evening was a time of fun for our High School and Middle School youth students. There were six groups of four, and a driver on each team. Based on the TV show, The Amazing Race, each team had to accomplish 12 challenges. And what a vast array of challenges there were!
Our own challenge was one that involved MENTAL skills... we are NOT a messy family. So...
Bring on Christmas just a LITTLE early.

After a morning of fixing the rest of my Halloween costume, I spent some time in the kitchen baking up a batch of Christmas cookies... and we had a list of 17 Christmas songs for the kids to name. (Yes, I was feeling a little "seasonally conflicted" by that time!) The teams were given a bit of lyric and from that they had to come up with the name of the song. There were songs AND traditional hymns... and I must say, most of the kids struggled. A few didn't do bad, and one young lady blew me away when she got the hardest one on the list with no problem at all!

Our daughter Carly, above with the bandanna and yellow shirt, was on one of the teams. I believe they ended up being dubbed Carly's Angels... and these girls cracked me up. One of the songs, Hark the Herald Angels Sing, gave them a fit. And the funniest part was the fact they kept singing that part of the song over and over again and saying, "What is the name of that song?" Their driver, Ms. Kim, said she was going to have to leave the room, she wanted to help them SO bad. But no help was allowed.

Poor Jacob was the ONLY boy on his team, but hey, if you can be surrounded by lovely young ladies, how bad can it truly be! And at the end of their challenge they were treated to a Christmas Cookie... and off they went to their next challenge.

These kids made their way through an obstacle course (which ended with making s'mores :) ), dug for $5 worth of dimes in a vat of tomato juice, macaroni and other change, and bobbed for apples in a tub of ICE WATER! They visited the "gross buffet" where I do believe some of them "tossed their cookies!" There were other stops as well, some physically challenging and some just downright gross.

The event ended at "The Ranch", a property owned by our church, Greenville Christian, where the kids and their adult leaders ate chili and hot dogs, and enjoyed some fellowship time.

A HUGE thanks to all those who opened their homes, took time to drive our kids, and put this event together. I believe that it was a huge success... and I'm ALREADY planning for next years Race... just hoping they ask us to be a host home again. It was truly an enjoyable time getting to spend a bit of our evening with the future of our church... they are an AMAZING group of kids!