I Didn't See That Coming

The challenge we planned for tonight was this-

We had four 50 gallon drums that we filled about 1/3 full of water. We tied ropes to them and then draped the rope over the soccer nets. The teams were going to have to pull the rope to life the buckets off the ground and hold it up for longer than the rest of the teams. While they held the buckets, three teammates would use smaller buckets to throw water into other the teams' buckets (making them heavier). We put two teams on each soccer goal.

I blew the whistle and watched two teams pull, lifting the buckets dramatically and then, in slow motion, the soccer nets simultaneously topple over, ripping enormous concrete footings out of the ground as they fell.

For a second, I stood there in shock and then I blew my whistle to halt the competition. M, A, K and I huddled together. I did not expect that. I did not have a back up.

After about 5 minutes of talking about other options while the teams loudly sang their cheers and relived the drama, I sent all the kids to the chapel to buy us some time.

We decided to quickly set up a balancing challenge we'd planned for the next day and by the time the kids were finished with chapel, we were ready for them.

The challenge was to balance a stack of dishes on top of a round cone. We announced each dish, one by one and whoever could make the tallest stack, would win. We did 4 rounds (three players from each team were in each round) and it was intense! It is amazing how exciting you can make something so simple as stacking up dishes, but we were all on the edge of our seats at the end.

When the second to last stack fell and the boy who had the tallest stack realized he'd won, the entire team of boys jumped in the air and then collapsed into each other in a pile of hugging, excited boys. You would have thought they won the World Series based on their reaction! It was amazing.

So in the end, tonight's activity was a success, despite our initial setback!