The Lish Family Extravaganza!

So about a month ago I had all my Lish family (minus Nate) come up to my house for the Lish Family Extravaganza! It was super epic :) There was a lot of preparation and anticipation leading up to the event, but all was worth it! Each family prepared an activity and a meal for the weekend.  Now, if any of you know where I live, you might be thinking...where did everybody sleep?  In our portable hotels of course :)

Unfortunately it rained most of Saturday and Sunday, but we still had a great time!  Saturday night the bottom of the tents got a little wet, but it wasn't too bad. Sunday night, it didn't rain one drop, but at about 3 am, the sprinklers went off! It scared me so bad! Ha ha!  But, once I realized it wasn't getting my tent wet, it was only my sisters, I promptly went back to sleep :)  My mom, however, decided she needed to be a hero. She got out and put Xander's army man helmet on top of the sprinkler. :) Nice job mom!  

Last year Heidi bought a Bingo cage.  Now it's our family reunion tradition to play many rounds of bingo :)  Each person brings a couple of dollar store prizes and we play to win the epic prizes.  We had a ton of fun playing and winning one of the beautifully wrapped dollar store treasures.

There was a lot of celebration packed into the weekend.  We waited to until the extravaganza to celebrate Mother's Day.  We all chipped in and got my mom some delicious smelling perfume.  She loved it of course!

The extravaganza was only a couple days after my birthday and a few days before Ryan's birthday so my sisters decided to surprise us both!  Saturday Heidi and Heather had to go on a "personal errand."  They came back with a home-made flamingo (or as Xander used to call it faringo ha ha) pinata, presents, and tasty Cold Stone ice cream cupcakes.  Xander did spill the beans a little bit because about ten minutes after they got to my house he said, "We made you a pinata." Then, about half an hour later he said, "When can we bust open your pinata?"  Ha ha got to love him :)  But, I was still surprised because I didn't know about the cupcakes or how awesome said pinata was going to be!  I'm pretty sure it will go down in epicness history! :)  See for yourself...

We had sooo much fun busting it open!  We let Xander and Paizley take the first cracks at it.  They didn't damage the flamingo one bit.  So, I took a swing at it.  That was pretty much an epic fail.  Ha ha.  I broke the string the flamingo was hanging from.  Oh well, it ended up alright because someone pitched it to Zach and he cracked it wide open.  There was a bunch of tasty candy in that pink bird! I also thoroughly enjoyed the cupcakes.  They were pretty much the most delicious ice cream cupcakes I've ever eaten. Plus, they were pink and brown which is one of my favorite color combos :)  The amazing presents included a flamingo mold, glitter tattoos, a goat sign, a goat cookie cutter and flamingo straws.  (If you couldn't tell, I love flamingos and goats) Super cool birthday Surprise!   

On Sunday, my sisters surprised Ryan with a sock monkey head pinata.  It was pretty awesome, but not as awesome as mine ;)  They also got him a variety of poop themed gifts.  (Yep...that sums up my brother) My mom also made a death by chocolate cake.  Basically it's a chocolate cake with chocolate chips in it and chocolate frosting.  Crazy good but crazy rich too.  When we took Ryan's pinata out, my sisters were like okay now don't hit the string like Hailey did.  Next thing we know, the pinata is on the ground.  Ha ha way to go Ryan :)  But he did a Zach style bust and then preceded to beat the poor little monkey.  The pinatas were a great success! Thanks for super memories Heidi and Heather :)


  

On Sunday we did my mom's activity: geocaching. It's one of our family's favorite activities. We went to four locations and found two of the geocaches.  We had a lot of fun hunting, finding, taking something, and leaving something!  Ha ha.  My favorite part of the geocaching was discovering an epic park in Logan.  It had a pool of water that was full of flowering lily pads.  I had never seen lily pads in real life.  They were beautiful! Of course we all had to have our pictures taken in front of them :)

Monday was the last day of our Extravaganza and despite my amazing luck (ha ha) we actually had beautiful weather.  It was one of those days that was warm; not too hot or too cold.  So, we pretty much packed a finity activities into this one day.  First up was Heidi's activity: Minute to Win it.  I don't watch that show because Guy Fietti makes me want to throw up, but I think it's a super cool concept: tasks involving simple rules and common household objects that contestants have one minute to complete.   Pairs were determined by drawing names out of a hat.  The first event was Penny hose: The contestant must retrieve two pennies dropped into a pair of tights without stretching or bunching the tights or having one hand help the other. The line up was as follows: 

• Heather vs Zach; Victor: Zach
• Hailey vs Ryan; Victor: Hailey
• Emily vs Steven; Victor: Emily
• Mom vs Dad; Victor: Mom

The next event was Face the Cookie: The contestant, using only their face, must move one Oreo cookies individually from their forehead to their to their mouth.  We matched winner against winner:

• Zach vs mom; victor: Zach
• Hailey vs Emily; victor: Hailey

The final event matched husband against wife.  It was called Caddy Stack: The contestant must stack three golf balls on the table.  The stack must remain in place for three seconds in order for the contestant to complete the challenge.  But this challenge was basically impossible, so we decided to do a different one for the grand championship: Don't Blow the Joker: The contestant must blow a standard deck of cards off a bottle, but leave the bottom card, the joker, still standing on the bottle. So this event was pretty hard too, but I was the closest, so the victory was mine :)

We played a couple of other minute to win it games including letting the losers duke it out :P

My activumty was an epic Olympics!  The games were kicked off with the running/scootering of the incredible torch I made by Heidi and Xander.  This was followed by a super fun game of water balloon volleyball.  I think this was the favorite event of the games.  Even Xander and Paizley helped.  They loved loading the balloons.  There was also a water fight that broke out between Heidi and Ryan which was very entertaining to watch.  We also did discuss using paper plates and javelin using straws.  Heather and Zach won but I can't remember for sure who won which event though.  We did a tug-o-war between the two teams, but we only had a thin rope.  We should have realized it was not wise, doomed for sure, but we did it anyways.  About 30 seconds into the tug-o-war, the rope snapped and gave several people, including Xander rope burn. :(  Our final event was Hop scotch....this was basically just a filler so we could figure out the awards.  You can see the pictures in the slideshow for the awards. :) Each person got a little certificate and a home-made medal (compliments of my mom and me).  Overall, the Olympics was a super fun success.     

The last event of the Extravaganza was going to the willow park zoo.  It was a lot of fun, but we were all sooo exhausted by the end of the day! 

I was really glad that everyone could make it to the Extravaganza.  We had a great time with a lot of food and fun :)