Summer Games

In the spring I had the idea to have a fun "Summer Games" day over the summer break.  Seeing as we only have just over a week before school starts, it was about time that we did it!  I have been thinking about different things we could do, but hadn't really made a plan for the day.  So this morning Louis and I sat down and came up with a list of games we could do with the kids, then we went around the house gathering the things we'd need for the day.

We let the girls pick which parent they wanted on their team.  Mary picked me, and Avery picked Louis.  Our first game was the football throw!  We hung a hula hoop on a branch of a tree and we had three throws of the football each.  Each time you made it through you earned your team 5 points. 

For our second game we had 6 cups and some plastic golf balls.  Each person got 6 balls and got to try and get their balls into the cups.  For each ball they got in they got 5 points for their team.  

Our next game was one of my favorites of the day.  We had a big cooler full of water and two ice cream buckets sitting about 20 feet away from the cooler.  As a team we had to take turns filling a cup with water and transferring it to the bucket.  Avery and Mary took the first run down to the ice cream buckets and Mary put her cup of water into Avery and Louis' bucket!  We cleared up her confusion and started again!

Thinking back about it, this next game actually might have been my favorite!  It was also Avery's favorite.  Sack races!  The kids had never done it before and they did great!  Ethan even tried it out.  Which was adorable.  

Then it was onto 3-legged races!  We talked out our strategy and then hobbled along around the trees!

Mary and I won, but Louis may have let us.

Ethan wanted a turn after our race was done

After the three-legged race it was onto an obstacle course!  What we did was we timed how long it took for one team member to go through the course, slap their partners hand, and for their partner to go through the course.   Step one was to walk with a ball in between your legs making your way over to a piece of PVC pipe.  Once you got to the pipe, you dropped the ball and hopped back and forth over the pipe.  Then you walked across a balance beam, did 5 jumping jacks, and ran around both trees.  After that you went and grabbed a balloon from your partner and had to pop it either by stepping/jumping on it or by sitting on it.  The obstacle course was also a lot of fun and we all enjoyed it.  

Our next game was hopscotch.  During this game I learned something new about Louis, in elementary school (1st grade I think) Louis won a hopscotch competition!  What we did for this game was throw a Frisbee onto the hopscotch and wherever it landed we had to skip that square.  If you fell off you didn't get your 5 points, but if you stayed on until the end you earned 5 points for your team.  

We were almost done with the day, our next competition was a spoon race.  

Mary surprised us by doing really well with this one!  

This next one was Louis' favorite of  the day, cup flipping.  He liked it because the kids had to keep trying until they succeeded, not just throwing something and either they got it or they didn't.  We each had an upside down cup hanging off the table a bit, we had to flip it with one hand until it landed up right side up.  

Our last game was the Frisbee toss!  We had four mats on the ground, if you get your Frisbee on the first 

mat you earn 5 points, 10 points for the second mat, 15 for the third, and 20 for the fourth.

In the end Louis was very sweet and played the Frisbee toss game in a way that made it so the teams tied!

Everyone ended the summer games happy!  It was such a fun day of playing around!  

Possibly a new summer tradition.  

Fun Fall Pictures

We went out looking for leaves earlier this week to take some fun pictures!  

Emergency Preparedness Family Reunion

Louis and I were in charge of the Brandley family reunion this year.  Louis took over the planning and decided to make it a weekend of emergency preparedness!  He had a lot of fun planning different "classes" for the weekend, reading up on different topics, and getting supplies together.

Since we moved two or three weeks before the reunion and had a lot of boxes laying around Louis had the idea to have a car show and a drive in movie!  Everyone made a cardboard car and we lined them up in the gym.  After we all ate dinner and checked out everyone's cars we started a movie (We watched Cars of course) and watched them in our cars.

 Later in the evening we got to sing Happy Birthday and give presents to the wonderful Kamila!  

The next morning we all met up for breakfast and for our first official day of emergency preparedness training.  The first class Louis taught was on knives.  What different kinds of knives there are, what you use them for, and how to care for your knives.

Later in the day Louis talked about how to make a blow gun out of PVC pipe and how to make homemade darts out of a nail and duct tape.  When we were done with that he pulled out a bunch of blow guns he had made and several bags of mini marshmallows!  We headed over to the park and had a marshmallow gun fight!  

After lunch most of the group headed out to go shooting.  I didn't take part in this, but instead went home so Ethan could nap.  From what I heard though it was a lot of fun!  I think the highlight for everyone was getting to see Annette shoot a gun!  Apparently she never had before!  

On Sunday we all went to church and met up afterwards.  We talked about different kinds of emergency kits, bug out bags, car kits, and 72 hour kits.  We also talked about a family emergency plan.  Jonathan has some great bags prepared and he helped with this class.

Later in the evening Louis did a class on different ways to start fires!  One of his favorite subjects!  Did you know that a crayon will burn for 30 minutes?  He went over things you can buy and have prepared as fire starters, he also talked about what you can put together in an emergency as a fire starter.  After he was done teaching he had stuff prepared for people to make their own fire starters.

This is a crayon burning

Monday was mostly spend outside playing.  We met at a church that has a large field and a pavilion behind it; we BBQ'd and played games.  Of course since Kaileb was there we stunted a bit!  Mary wasn't a fan.

In the evening everyone came over to our house for dinner and family home evening.  I was in charge of family home evening and I talked about family home storage.  As part of the lesson we made our own butter!  This was something Avery did in preschool and wanted to do with everyone.  So she got up and told everyone how to make butter and during my lesson we all passed around the jar and shook it to make our butter!  After the lesson we all got to enjoy it on some bread I had made earlier that day.

That was the end of our reunion!  It was a busy few days, but as always fun to be together, the kids had fun running around with their cousins and hopefully everyone learned a few things!