Strawberries with Cream: I'm Gonna Steal the Declaration of Independence...

This year at our family reunion, inspired by a family from church, mom and I put together a big group challenge game that everyone could play together one evening. The family we stole the idea from chooses a different theme every year to make the challenge around, and since we were visiting the Black Hills, we decided to theme ours National Treasure.

The prizes? Themed cups with "treasure" (aka chocolate coins, money pops, and pay days).

We planned five challenges and split the group into five teams, each named after a character in the movie. We even gave out name tags and made a score board!

Once everyone found their teams, we got ready for the first challenge! Each team had one of the five oldest great-grandkids on it, and they were the participants of the first challenge: Egg Roll at the White House!

Fastest kid to roll the plastic egg down their yarn path with a spoon is the winner! Jonah figured out he could push the egg really far with his spoon, and won the most points for his team.

Grandpa, watching the shenanigans.

Challenge number two? Steal the Declaration of Independence, of course! Three people from a team competed: one was blindfolded and had to find the declaration. One was gagged and had to find the declaration and film it using FaceTime without speaking, and the third person was looking away, and only looking at the FaceTime video and had to shout out directions to the blindfolded teammate.

Teams carefully discussed who would be the ones to participate. Then one by one they tried, starting with the team in first place and ending with the team in last place.

The first place team, Patrick Gates, came in first again. Off to a solid lead, it was time for challenge three: The Secret Lies With Charlotte. The task? The remaining five teammates line up, draw a paper out of a hat to tell them which of five items they are looking for (key, coin, glasses, pipe, and boat), and then have to stick their hand in the bucket of ice water and find the correct item without looking, one by one, as fast as possible. The team with the fastest time wins!

The winners of that challenge was team Ben Gates, but Patrick Gates still had the lead of points. Then came the next challenge: What's on Page 47? Each team lined up all the adults in a straight line. The person in back had a book copy of the Declaration and Constitution and a secret code to figure out a five letter word. They then had to write the word on the back of the person in front of them, using their finger, and each person passed the word forward to the front of the line, where that person wrote down the word and the person from the back came and checked. The fastest team to get the word figured out at the front of the line wins! (what was the word, you might ask? Grail!)

This time team Riley pulled out the win, but Patrick Gates kept hold of the lead on points. Now it was time for the elaborate last challenge: the Relay.

Grandpa getting chillier as the sun set.

The relay was set up for the whole team to participate. First the grandkid would run the declaration under the parachute and over the rock mound. Then two people would ballroom dance it to the next person, who would carry it and a wine glass filled with water across hazardous terrain, only carrying the glass from the bottom and not spilling a drop. Then they handed it off to the next person, who had to type out the words "valley forge" on a chalk keyboard on the sidewalk by hopping from letter to letter. Then the next person bear crawled with the declaration across the driveway and handed off to a person whose hands were tied behind their back. That person ran it down the hill to someone who walked it across the rocks, and then handed off to the final person who sprinted up the hill to the finish! For the other rounds we gave points 5, 4, 3, 2, 1 to the teams in order of placement. This time the points were doubled to give all the teams a chance of winning: 10, 8, 6, 4, 2. Who would win?