The Amazing Race!

Our faculty decided this year to hold our own Amazing Race instead of a regular Christmas Party. We had teams of four and had to start out at Mercado Juarez to figure out a puzzle. It was one of those things where there are pictures of different things and you had to figure out what song it meant. Like there was santa in an airplane flying over some houses and that was "santa claus is coming to town". After we figured out all 20 of those, we had to turn it in to get our first clue. It said "go to West (our school) cafeteria...hope you're hungry!". So we RAN to the car and started off to the school. Being rush hour, we had to go the back way and get to arbrook. Going through the Highlands there was a lot of traffic, so at a stop sign, Wendy (our driver) was waving a person to go and Candace said, "Wendy, there's no time for being nice...GO! GO! GO!!" lol We got to the cafeteria and we had to stack cookies 15" tall unsupported, without them falling, and we could only use the one package of cookies. We thought this would be easy since first grade does an oreo project every year, including stacking cookies as high as possible....um, nope! These were the cheapie cookies that are like a flower pattern, so theyre not flat like oreos! We finally got that done and got our next clue which said to go out to the basketball court and make 3 free throws. After that, our next clue was to go to walmart just down the highway.

We went to wallmart to find Matt sitting on a bench with two envelopes, "greet" or "eat" and i said, "Um, I dont eat stuff" and was terrified of what it might make us eat!!! So instead we chose greet, and our task was to find a stranger to donate $5 to salvation army. One person in our group misunderstood and pulled out $5 to give to them, but we told her it had to be a stranger, so she found a stranger, handed him her $5 (yes, we cheated!) and he was going to put it in the bucket. then we yelled, "NO! NO! NO! We have to have a picutre!!!". Unfortunately, Walmart security man was standing there saying, "no pictures in walmart!!!", so Salvation army guy said, "well go outside" and he brought his bucket right outside the door. We took the pic, I went back inside to get the clue from Matt and Security Man got in my face and said, "you need to step outside, Miss", then he called on his little walkie talkie, "outside security....i need outside security at the east door" and i just looked at Matt like, "is he kidding?". We stepped outside, matt handed us the clue and as we drove off, I saw the security dude talking to Matt. I coudl just see the headlines now, "Local Teachers Arrested for Disturbing the Peace, Salvation Army at Local Walmart" LOL!!! Fortunately, Matt is so good in those situations. He's our vice principal and he gets all of the irate parents who just want to tell someone they're mad. He's so calm and cool and very diplomatic. He is the perfect person to diffuse a situation like that...

gotta run to the store real quick...bf our massages at 2pm so madison can scan some toys and make a wish list. going shopping for all the kids with my parents tonight so they can buy them their christmas presents. apparently her cousins made target wish lists, so now we need to...lets see if she understands to scan it but were not buying it!!! lol

the rest of the amazing race night is forthcoming... :)

okay, back from the store...sort of hard on a kid to say, "okay, show me what toys you what, but oh, btw, we're not actually buying any today!" but Madison was a good sport.

Back to the amazing race...

after we left walmart, our next clue said "go to starrett elementary, you'll get a kick out of it". So we tear off running down the main hallway when we get there...but the hallway is probably at LEAST half a football field, if not more. Well, if you think you need to pee constantly when you're pg, try RUNNING while pg! As we were running down to the very end of the hall where the gym is, we passed a faculty bathroom and I thought, "well, this is as close to a bathroom as I'm going to get tonight without losing time," so I told my team i'd meet them in the gym, and rushed into the bathroom really quick. I came out to find them standing in the hall confused. There was nothing in the gym. So we went to the cafeteria where the 6th graders were having a dance. nope. nothing. Eventually we found them outside behind the building. I stayed with the car and my team ran down past the locked gate to the game. Apparently it was really hard and they weren't able to do it right so they got penalty. When I called asking what was taking so long, they told me we got a 6 minute penalty. ugh. When they finally did come, our clue had a bunch of initials and we had to figure out what they had in common....of course, being the mature teachers we are, out of all the initials the only ones my teammates picked up on right away were "MF" as in Mother F'er and "BO" as in body odor! lol We figured out they were all presidents' initials and had to tell Matt's wife, Julie, when we got to Borders in order to get our next clue.

Wow, borders was hard. We had a list of books (from all different sections of the store, of course) and on each book, we had to look on a certain page number, and find a specific word, like "page 242, word 54" then we had to take those words and put them together to make a sentence. The words were:
to
anonymous
Mom's
be
in

unfortunately, "in" was the wrong word...our teammate who found that book miscounted, bc she didnt include the subtitle. the word should have been "pretend"...but apparently a lot of teams did the same thing. We finally left and had to run out front and run up and down the landscaping of the highlands and count all the lighted deer between borders and studio movie grill. Then off to mercado juarez.

However, on the way there, we were talking about how I had been running so fast this whole evening and I mentioned that my lower belly WAS sore from all the running. Someone had the idea to call Matt and tell them we were on the way to the hospital across the street bc all the running made me start having contractions. The way Matt is, we figured he didn't believe us anyways, so we went ahead and went in...but I folded up Candace's baby blue jacket and walked it like it was the baby. When I walked in the room everyone went, "oh!!!" lol I guess they had told everyone and they actually DID believe it. They were all worried and one of my teammates already tried to call me, and another one (who was really worried, bc both of her kids were preemies...she later told me her heart sank when she heard the "news"!) was about to call...she said she had her finger on the button to dial my phone when I walked in!!! Wow, didnt think they'd believe it! Poor things, they were actually worried about me! When I told Matt we didn't think he'd believe it, he said, "oh, I bought it...hook, line and sinker! I was worried, I asked Yleen (principal) when you were due and she said March and we started thinking, ooooh, this is NOT good!" lol hmmm, hope I don't really have any issued...they'll never believe me. I'll be like the boy who cried wolf....I'll be the mom who cried pregnant! lol

We stayed and had dinner and talked until about 10:30. Matt said he's ready to plan the next Amazing Race for our school...we thought it'd be something fun to do maybe again in the spring. It was definitely a great time! Can't wait till next year! :)