Monday, July 24, 2006

Family Picnic


Well, it's been over a week now, but on July 16, DH and I along with his business partner and wife, hosted our annual company family picnic at a park by our library. Every year seems to be a little bigger and better. This year we had the families from our three employees in Yakima, plus our six in the Kennewick office and their families. Gary and I are in charge of kid games, prizes, and gift bags.

On the day before the picnic, DH and I went to the dollar store and loaded up a cart with goodies for the kids. We had a list of all the kids who were planning to attend and it totaled 33 kids! There was a bag full of toys and goodies for each of them. It's quite a chore separating the toys and bagging them up by sex and age! Then there were about 29 adults. We had sisters, cousins, nieces, moms - all kinds of family were there.



I prepared a big bucket of bubbles that the younger children especially seem to like.
Gary had a box of pvc pipe pieces he'd cut to various sizes, with a bunch of different connectors. Put them together in a certain way and you make a marshmallow blow gun, except this year we used Cocoa Puffs as marshmallows on shoes are a pain to clean.

The park has a little water feature area so the kids can get wet - very popular on a hot July afternoon!

While the adults played bingo for some very nice prizes, Gary and I had some relay races for the kids that mostly involved ice cold water. Then we ended with a frozen t-shirt contest. I had twisted and tied up some tshirts then soaked them with water and froze them. The kids had to work together in small teams to get the shirt apart and onto one of the team members. It took a lot more work than they thought, but the lucky ones who ended up wearing them, left them on for a long time! We ended our games with the annual watermelon eating contest which the kids have come to love. Both contests were won by girls!

It's always a lot of work getting prepared for this event, but seeing all the kids having such a great time makes the effort worthwhile.

9 comments:

Cathy B said...

Looks like everyone had a fabulous time. I like the frozen t-shirt contest idea - will have to remember that one!

Mia said...

Von, the picnic looked like so much fun. I think I would have been with the kids in the little water area. :)

Wendy said...

It sounds like your company picnic was a huge success! Great work!!

Myrna said...

Looks like great fun!

I enjoy reading your posts, and will try to comment more often. :-)

lena-lou said...

Goodness me Von...I think you must be Wonder Woman lol. What a lovely day you have all had and what thought and effort you have put into it! I am glad it went so well for you...my family would have loved a day like that :-))

Dianne said...

Cool! Looks like a great time with some very organized 'leaders'!

Anonymous said...

It sounds and looks like a wonderful time was had by all. Congratulations on your success! I hope you've been able to rest up since, as I'm sure that took a lot of planning and work. :)

Singular Stitches said...

Wow! It looks like you guys had an absolutely fantastic time!!

Anne S said...

What a wonderful day your family day at DH's work was - those photos are great ... wanna trade some of that heat for a bit cooler weather? I'm more than happy to do a swap, even for just one day! :D