Valentine's Day Road Rally

Chrissie and John invited us to go to a couples Valentine's Day Road Rally with some of their friends from church. The road rally was basically a scavenger hunt where each team had to find the things on their list and take a picture with their team with the things they find.

We started at Chrissie's church, Trinity Baptist, where we learned what we would be doing and who was on our team. Each team consisted of three couples. Our team happened to all be new to the road rally but we we weren't going to let that stop us!

We were on Team Mango's, which meant that we would be eating dinner at Mango's in downtown Mesa. Someone at the restaurant had our list and we had to find that person with the clue we were given. Once we had that we had until 6:45 to look over the list and start planning our strategy. We had until 8:30 to find as many things as we could. The first team back to Chrissie's got bonus points and if your team was late you would lose points. Creativity counted.

Here is the list each team was given. The things in red are what we did.

• Your team handcuffed together (extra 100 if behind bars)
• With a person whose birthday is today, with ID
• Everyone in group in (some sort of ) Cardinals apparel
• With bride & groom in wedding attire
• With someone (not a team member) holding a trophy
• With a banjo player
• Team inside a police car
• A team member pumping a strangers gas
• Young lovers kissing
• With a pizza delivery person
• Your team sharing a soda, must each have a straw
• Spell something with your bodies
• Carrying a strangers groceries
• With a clown
• In front of a live band
• Heavily tattooed person
• Picture of a sign with a team members name on it
• Walking a strangers dog
• picture of a "neon diving girl"
• With a nurse (in uniform)
• In an elevator backwards with forward facing strangers
• On a piece of farm or construction equipment
• Posing with a mannequin doing the same pose
• At a swimming pool all on the diving board
• From the inside of an automatic carwash
• At a dinner table with a group of strangers
• Doing a Chinese fire drill
• Each member of team on separate motorcycle
• In front of illuminated Christmas decorations or lights
• All of you in or on some form of public transportation (bus, taxi, light rail, etc)
• In front of a tombstone dated before 1900
• In the sleeping quarters of a hotel with hotel logo visible
• With a farm animal or animals
• With a hot dog vendor
• Delivering a pizza with the pizza delivery guy
• Pierced tongue
• Doing leap frog down a grocery store isle
• Getting advice from a pharmacist at the counter
• On a golf green with one of you putting
• At a fast food restaurant with team wearing employee hats
• Dancing in a club or lounge
• Team playing bingo

There were also three bonus items that were texted to us. There were:

• Capturing the phrase "That's gotta hurt"
• "Wow, I can't believe we all fit in there"
• "Can this be legal?"

While John downloaded everyone's photos we had dessert then we watched the slideshow of each team's adventure. It was a lot of fun to watch what everyone did and how creative they were. Chrissie and her friend were the judges and awarded points based on the pictures. Even though our team found more items (only by 1) we got back to Chrissie's house second so we didn't get the bonus points putting us in second place. Chris and I won a prize for the best use of household items. We were able to accomplish a ton of things at our house or because of our neighbors so that was cool.

I can't remember the last time I laughed so hard and had such a good time. We can't wait for next year's road rally!

Happy Birthday Kyle & Caleb

I can't believe that Kyle and Caleb are 5 years old already! It doesn't seem that long ago that they were the tiny babies I was afraid to hold. They are certainly growing up fast!!!

To celebrate their birthday we took the boys to Disneyland. In 2009 Disney is running a deal where if you go to one of their parks on your birthday you get in free. Well score one for us - we got two kids in free at once. Since their birthday was on a Wednesday and we had to pull Seth from school we spent just one day at Disneyland.

The first thing we did when we got to the park was head to the Jedi Training Academy. Seth and Kyle were hoping to get picked for training but it wasn't meant to be. Even so they enjoyed watching. After a battle with Darth Vader and a couple of Clone Troopers it was off to Space Mountain. Seth didn't want to ride so he sat with the stroller while the rest of us headed off to my very favorite ride :) Since it was the middle of the week in January the lines were non-existent and we only had to wait about 5 minutes! Kyle and Caleb were a little apprehensive at first because it's dark inside but once the ride started they were hooked!!!

After Space Mountain we did Star Tours then Astro Blasters and then a rocket ride. We spent a lot of time in Tomorrow Land before heading off to Toon Town. On our way to Toon Town we rode the Matterhorn. It took a lot of convincing to get Seth to go on it and at first he wasn't liking it but about half way through he was hooked. Yeah! Another roller coaster rider!!!! I am so exceited about that. He even wanted to go on Space Mountain and of course I had no objections there. Since we headed to Toon Town we told him we'd do it after we saw Mickey.

Once in Toon Town we had our picture taken with Mickey Mouse, rode a small roller coaster, met Goofy and went to Minnie's house. As promised we went back to Space Mountain for Seth. He is defineately hooked on roller coasters now! After another try at being picked for Jedi Training Academy, which none of my cute boys were picked for :( we headed over to the Indiana Jones ride. Unfortunately, Kyle and Caleb are still too short to ride that one so Chris took Seth while the little boys played at the treehouse then I went with Seth while Chris waited. It worked out okay and the boys had a good time playing at the treehouse but I know they would have loved the ride. Oh well, I guess we'll just have to go again when they're taller. Darn.

After a long, but very fun day at Disneyland it was time to head back to the hotel. We stopped at Denny's for dinner and had planned on taking the boys for ice cream but Caleb fell asleep at dinner so we put that off for another day. After some much needed sleep it was time to head for home. It was a short trip but we all had so much fun. I am glad that we were able to go, even if it was just one day. I think this is a birthday the boys will never forget.