Days of Our Lives: Fear can be a Factor

My first-born recently turned 11. Where have the years gone? It seems like yesterday (or a few months ago anyway) that we were putting his baby seat on top of the clothes dryer praying for him to go to sleep. He had a case of colic that truly tested my mommy skills. Especially since I was a new mommy and had honestly not been around small children very much at all. Thankfully we all survived. Now I am praying to survive the coming teen years.

The boys are only allowed to have a "party" every other year. Matthew was last fall and now it was Austin's turn. We went back and forth on whether to have the party at home or at a local game area - economics decided to have it at home. So we set out to have a Fear Factor Party - "If Fear is not a Factor, come to my party".

First let me honestly say, fear is a factor for me especially with 20 children and the weather not cooperating. It was so cold and windy we had to do most of our challenges in-doors.

As we had a large group, I ended up splitting the kids into three teams. They were appropriately named "Scumbuckets", "Cockroaches", and "Maggots". When each child arrived they had to draw a slip of paper out of a bag and this was the team they were assigned to. Now we had some pretty gross things planned so I thought we might need some incentive. So, there was a canister full of cash to the team with the most points at the end. The teams were able to earn points by completing the challenges - the ones that finished first scored the most.

For each challenge I would only tell them if they had to eat or not and then they had to select a member to accept. Our first challenge was dog food. I had 3 cans of dog food and 3 dog food bowls - the first team to eat one (large) spoon scored first and then accordingly. Matthew was the first for his team (he wanted the money bad) and he ate the food first. One other person came in 2nd and the 3rd forfeited. Later that evening my son said to me "Mom, I can't believe you made me eat dog food". I had to show him the real dog food cans to prove that he hadn't. (I had switched the labels with chili).

Our next challenge was the "dig". I had 3 trays full of green spaghetti, pigs feet, chicken feet, and fish (yes, this was real). Inside of this appetizing mound was 3 small plastic insects. The 1st team to find them won 1st and again accordingly.

Then we had the baby food challenge. Each team had a cup of baby food and a life saver at the bottom. The first to suck the life save and tell me the flavor won. One little boy almost did not make it - poor thing was gagging. I felt so sorry for him, but he recovered and stayed for the challenges.

Next was another food challenge. Each team had a plate with 3 items on it (smoked oyster, sardine, beenie weeine in hot sauce), they only had to eat 1 item. Two of the boys managed to get down an oyster, I think they thought it was something chocolaty. One of them asked me to please not tell him before he ate or he might not be able to. One girl said no way, so she got sprayed.

Then we went outside for the "potato sack race". Remember the green spaghetti, well we dumped that in the bottom of the sacks and each team had to have 2 people hop across the yard in them. Gross!

Last thing was not scored. It was just messy. We took bowls of jello, and the green spaghetti (including pigs feet and all) and the kids had a giant food fight.