Outer Banks Family Reunion, part 1, "The Teams"

We just got home from our trip to the North Carolina Outer Banks for my side of the family, reunion--28 people.  My brother rented a beach house for all of us to stay in (eight bedrooms, private pool and hot tub, game room with pool table and foose ball--the works) and we all headed back East for some fun family togetherness.  The first night, my sister in law announced that we would be competing in teams the whole week.  She had divided us up fairly (equal amount of young kids, mothers, teenage boys and fathers) and every day at 10:00 am, we were to meet at the beach for team competition.  (Our beach house was not directly on the beach but a short walk away).  

We are fierce competitors and none of these activities were taken lightly.  

The Teams:  Team Green (headed by my brother)

Team Orange:  Headed by Dentist husband

Team Blue:  Headed by my brother-in-law, married to sister number 3

The pyramid pictures were taken at the sand dunes near Kill Devil Hills.  That day, we had long jump (down a long sandy hill) races and running up and down races on the sand dunes.  We competed by category--sisters and sister-in-law, teenage boys, adult men (the fathers) and children under 11.  

Day 2:  Relay races (no photos because I forgot my camera).  Potato sack, egg on the spoon, three legged race and egg toss.

Day 3 Obstacle course:

Each team had to come up with two different elements as part of the obstacle course.  Each team was timed as whole, meaning, each person did the whole obstacle course and all times were added up as one group time.  Orange team schooled the rest of us that day.  

Day 4 Soccer  Again, no photos but each team had an A group and B group.  B group were the younger  players (and their mothers) and A group were the older (teenage, playing on their school soccer team) players.  Each half was five minutes and two halves were played.  Each team played each other.  This was very fun but exhausting.  Have you ever played soccer on the sand?  Brutal.   

Day 5:  Sand castle and hole digging.  

We had one hour to build a sand castle and dig a sand hole.  The sand holes were judged by volume of sand removed.  (Yes, we had a measuring tape and computed it.)   By Day 5, we had a crowd of people watching us compete--people who had rented beach houses at the same beach that we did and were at the beach at the same time.  They got really curious about what we were doing and came up and asked what was going on with our huge, loud, color coded group.  They were all very nice and fascinated by our large, very competitive family and after the first day, several vacationers actually made it a point to come out and see what we were doing that day. We asked two different groups of these nice people to judge the best sand castle.  Sister Number 2 really befriended (buttered-up) some of the judges and there was much drama after their sand castle won.  We think she got some insider votes.  (Again, we are very competitive)  

Third place sandcastle.

The first place sandcastle

2nd place sand castle

Inside our holes.  Again, team Orange schooled all of us on this one, moving over 110 cubic feet of sand. (FYI:  The sand holes had to have four right angles, thus the box shapes.) 

Day 6:  Red Light/Green Light and Simon Says.  This went on forever in that we all very good Simon Says players with the exception of my immediate family.  We obviously are not very good listeners because it seemed that the Toothsome family were always the first six people out.  That night, we had team trivia night, where we had to come up with two difficult questions about people on our teams to be asked in the group.  This was a true question, "Who has said out loud, 'I shattered that toilet!'"  

When all was said and done, Orange team beat the green and blue handily.  We have learned Dentist Husband and Sister #2 are forces to be reckoned with.  Also, when you have a nephew who runs over 30 miles a week (one of the top runners in the state of Maryland) on that team, they were hard to beat.  And, FYI, no prizes were won during all of this just the joy (and anguish) of competition.    More about the reunion later.  Time to do more vacation laundry.