Absolutely Awesome Teen Activity

Two of the moms from our favorite homeschooling support group, Magdie and Cindy, organized an absolutely AWESOME activity for the teens. I was so excited to get to participate in the activity with Brett and Hannah, one of those nights that made me glad to have teens and even happier that they have such a great group of homeschooling friends to hang out with!

Prior to the event, the organizers divided the kids onto teams and assigned each team a driver (although none of the participants or drivers knew who was on the teams). Once everyone was told what team they would be on, each team was given a digital camera, a list and 10 minutes to come up with their plan of attack. We were given exactly one hour to complete as many of the listed activities as we could (points would be deducted if you returned late!). The final catch, no activities could be preformed on the host family's property! We were given the list at 5:35 PM and permitted to leave at 5:45 PM....the fun was on!

Here was the list:
Take a picture of your team in/on a shopping cart (5 pt)
Collect an unusual, clever or creative item along the way (5 pt)
Take a picture of your team by a police car (10 pt) (10 pt extra is including a police officer)
Take a picture with a total stranger. Your team must be in the classic "YMCA" pose (15 pt)
Take a picture behind a counter with a restaurant worker (20 pt)
Take a picture of your team riding a lawn mower (15 pt)
Take a picture of your team wearing halloween masks (10 pt)
Collect a napkin or a menu from an Italian restaurant (5 pt)
Take a picture of a horse (10 pt)
Take a picture of your team in a shower (5 pt)
Collect a sample of play sand (5 pt)
Take a picture of your team climbing a tree (10 pt)
Collect a bag of hot sauce (10 pt)
Take a picture of your entire team on a playground slide (10 pt)
Take a picture of your team at a graveyard making scary faces (20 pt)
Take a picture of your team doing the chicken dance in front of a stopsign (15 pt)
Collect a photocopy of your driver's hands (15 pt)
Take a picture of your team holding different kinds of balls (10 pt)
Take a picture of your team next to construction equipment (5 pt)
Take a picture of a team meember sitting on a beauty or barber shop chair (10 pt)
Collect a real estate magazine/book (5 pt)
Collect a feather (10 pt)
Take a picture of one of your team mates drinking from a waterfountain (5 pt)
Tkae a picture shaking hands with a bearded man (15 pt)
Collect a picture of someone wearing a wedding dress (10 pt)( 20 pt if you can get one of your teammates in a wedding dress!)
Take a picture of a bus (5 pt)
Take a picture of your team on a fire truck (20 pt)
Take a picture of a team mate riding on a kiddie ride (5 pt) (10 pt if you get 4 members to ride!)
Take a picture of your team with a scarecrow (5 pt)
take a pciture of yoru team in a swimming pool or hot tub (20 pt)
Collect a cornstalk (10 pt)
Take a picture giving an older person a hug (15 pt)
Take a picture of your team holding up traveling books (each team member must be holding a book from a different country) (15 pt)
Take a picture of your team mates with paper cones on their heads (10 pt)
Take a picture in front of White Castle acting sick after eating a slider (15 pt) The White Castle sign must be in the picture!

Our team started out by calling Target to see if we could take pictures in the store...when they told us "no" we went to plan "B". We would hit the local strip mall with a children's resale shop in it! Our first stop was White Castle and then the police station which just so happened to have a metro bus on layover at the bus stop...then to the strip mall. We used a children's rocking horse as our horse and a toy firetruck with everyone's foot on it as our firetruck picture! We grabbed an assortment of balls for the ball picture, then headed to the chinese restauraunt for our behind the counter picture (a funny picture would have been me trying to explain to the kind chinese worker what we were doing and that he needed to be in the picture)..the kids struck the YMCA pose behind the counter. We grabbed masks off a display at the $1 store, ran into BIG LOTS to copy my hands and snagged a picture next to their scarecrow display. used a stopsign in the parking lot for the chicken dance picture, found a bearded man as we ran back to the car. Then it was off to the park to knock out the water fountain pic, slide pic, playground sand, a picture with an older man (who was walking his older dog... Gumbo), as we left the kids snagegd their "unusual" item, a pooper scooper bag from the walking trail. We stopped at a pizzeria for their menu and snapped our paper cone picture there (at which point our camera died!!!), then ran into UDF (convient store) to grab a real estate magazine. Our final goal, to find a riding mower before reaching our host family's house (luckily one of our team members had a digital camera with him!). We pulled onto the street and I told the kids to get out a run and look in all the open garages...if they spied a riding mower to go and ring the doorbell....we were in luck...the first open garage had one, and although the homeowner looked quite baffled, he let us snap the photo! The kids SPRINTED down the street and LANDED on the front lawn EXACTLY at 6:45 PM...we were the second team to arrive, the team behind us was a minute late (thus losing one point) and the final team was 7 minutes late (thus losing 7 points).

Everyone munched on pizza and drank sodas as they hooked up the cameras to the tv for everyone to watch and the judges (4 parents who didn't drive) to score each team. The pictures were HILARIOUS! I am hoping the host family emails me some of them, they are perfect "blackmail" pictures!

Our team WON by a WHOOPING 12 points (it was really one by 5 points because team #4 came in second and had the 7 point penalty)...the prizes were just little trinkets and junk the host family had laying around but the kids LOVED it! Brett said it was the BEST teen activity every and Hannah loved it (btw, Hannah looked so PRETTY ...she just had on jeans and a sweatshirt but she looked so nice...her hair us just pulled up in a "sloppy" bun and she had on a little eyeshadow and mascara...she is really blossoming into a beautiful young lady!).

The only things I would change are that I would make sure each team had two cameras (although ours was the only one that died!), I would add a few more things to "collect" and I would try to burn a copy of the pictures for each family to take home after the event.

Following the scoring, the teens stayed and hung out for a couple hours. I had to leave and pick up Will (I had asked my mom to watch him because Jay had to take everyone else to Jacob's football game...which he WON by the way, their first victory of the season!). My mom said Will cried the WHOLE time, poor baby, he has NEVER not had one of his siblings or mom or dad with him. At least she didn't say she would never watch him again, just that next time he had to bring one of his siblings with him! Apparently they even took him for a walk, and he was "happy" when they were walking away from their house (we guess he thought they were walking him home) but when the turned to go back he threw himself on the sidewalk and screamed hysterically....he screamed the whole walk home (my mom thought someone might even call the cops he was screaming so loud!). He survived though and nursed happily when he saw me!

Like I said, I hope I have pictures to post soon!

It was an absolutely GREAT night!