marks family reunion 2011 and the amazing race...

The whole Marks crew

This past week we had all of my siblings (there are eight of us) and our families (32 grandchildren)  gathered together for the first time in over six years.  We have had fun visiting, swimming, playing, eating, amusement parking, boating and just being together.  Because I live in Utah, I get the chance to see most of my brothers and sisters throughout the year as they come here to vacation, but there is something about all being together at the same time.  We have a boisterous, crazy group but we made some fun memories. 

The couples

Mom and Dad and their children

my incredible sisters

I have a fantastic sister, Shelly, who goes out of her way to create fun moments and memories, both in her own family and extending on to the rest of us.  She forces us out of our comfort zones, and gets us to try things we haven't done before.  Sometimes, we are a little hesitant to try her brainstorms, but in the end they become some of the best memories of all our time together.  This trip was no different.  She decided that the adults would do and "Amazing Race" around Orem.  She and her husband Warren thought up all the clues, and drove around texting us the next clues and taking pictures of all our crazy antics.  These are some of the pictures of the fun.

We divided up on two teams of four couples each.  Our first challenge was to use enormous sling shots and shoot various items of different weights and sizes into buckets.   Letha, my sister on the opposing team decided that Kelly was a threat so she pulled out some crazy moves to block us.  Who knew she was that competitive, good thing Kelly took her in height!

We started receiving our clues after we conquered the first challenge.  We received these by texts.  When we would get to the correct location we had to text a picture to Shel and if it was correct she would give us the challenge we had to complete there.  So the night involved lots of crazy driving, wrong locations and crazy people running all over town.

One of the challenges took us to a grocery store where we had to purchase and someone had to eat the grossest thing we could find.  The winning team got minutes subtracted from their over all time.  Pickled pigs feet and sardines were the choices.  I think I will stick with chocolate.

 After visiting a cemetery, department store, Trafalga, Winco, a bowling alley, and a whole bunch of other wrong locations, our last clue took us to Mimi's cafe where we all had dessert together and compared stories of the night. My team came in second, (notice I said second and not last) but it was close!  Again, thanks to Shelly and Warren for putting this all together and then insisting we do it.  It will be something we won't forget for a long time.

 

Shel even put a cute short video together of some of our adventures, just click on the amazing race link below! 

 

amazing race....

By the way, I stole most of these pictures and video from my sister's blog, so thanks again Shel. For those of you who want to see the clues they came up with you can visit her blog which is listed on the right hand side of mine. It's called hill happenings.