Family Winter Olympics!

Tonight was "reward night" for my kiddos for sticking to the new eating plan AGREEABLY for one month. One month that seems like forever!  And yet, it still seems like we have just started!  Enough exclamation points!

Anyway, I had promised the kids a fun night at the end of a month, so tonight was that night.  Several months ago (maybe more than a year??) we did a "progressive" dinner, and each course of the meal was eaten in a different part of the house and had a different hands-on activity to go with it.  They wanted something similar, but my creativity was struggling.

Then, my Family Fun magazine came in the mail and I saw an article about hosting your own family winter olympics.  Bingo!  A plan began brewing that turned out to be so fun!

They have been asking about it nonstop, so the pressure was on.  Today they were practically climbing the walls with excitement, yet they held off and didn't want to know the theme until time.

I brought out a homemade sign that announced it was our family winter olympics.  I told the kids we'd be "traveling" to different countries to taste their food and then playing a family olympic game.  We ate in the living room (a dinner-nic) just to change up things.  Daddy even played the olympic theme song while we ate.

Course 1 was a trip to Italy with cheesy Italian pepperoni bread (basically pizza crust brushed with olive oil and sprinkled with garlic and Italian seasonings, topped with mozzarella cheese and uncured pepperoni).  For our 1st game, we played javelin straws.  Only Daddy got a paper in the bowl, but the kids played for almost 30 minutes before asking for another game.   My daughter raced off when we announced Daddy the winner and gave him his "medal" of plastic costume jewelry beads.  And he WORE them!!

We were off to Mexico for course 2, with taco boats (flat taco shells with sides that looked like boats) and tortilla chips.  We played Thin Ice this time.  For the sake of time (or so I thought!), we didn't use the die but each just punched a hole in the tissue each turn. Next time I WILL use the die. Daddy won...again!  :)   Another set of beads from dearest daughter.

Course 3 was Chinese stir fry veggies and green beans with chopsticks.  The chopsticks could have been a game all on their own!  But, we chose to play Pom Pom Curling.  My son won this game and got his own set of gold medal beads.

Our final course was dessert.  French chocolate eclairs.  Super easy and SOOOOOOOOO amazingly good!!!  (My only substitution was whole wheat pastry flour for the all purpose flour).  My daughter even asked for seconds.  From her, that is a HUGE compliment!!  Our last game was "snowball bounce."  We set up 5 plastic drinking cups at the end of the coffee table in the shape of the olympic rings.  We each had 8 ping pong balls, and we bounced them from one end of the coffee table and tried to land them in the cups.   Daddy won the first round, but after some practice, my daughter sunk half the balls!  She played it for the rest of the night.

Overall,, we had so much fun just being silly together.  The kids begged for another night like this next month, so we'll see what I can find.  I told them we would do it again SOON, but I refused to promise a certain time!  I have learned the hard way with that one. :)