Winterfest 2008

I went with Nicholas and his class to Winterfest 2008 - and we had a blast!! The kids rode school buses to Evergreen Lake and then had an Olympic-style opening ceremony. Each class had picked a country to represent and Nicholas' class picked Ukraine! It was so cool - they made armbands in yellow and blue with "Team Ukraine" written on them. I only wish I knew there would be flags as we bought Nicholas a Ukrainian flag while in country and Team Ukraine could have carried that. But since they did not have a flag - they held their armbands high!! It was so cute and Nicholas was so tickled!

After our friend's son, Alex, read the purpose of the event and they "lit" the Olympic flame - the games began!

Team Ukraine's first event was the tank tracks. About 10 kids got in a huge black plastic loop and tried to walk forward over the snow. They didn't get far before everyone came falling out laughing! It was really quite funny.

Their second event was a relay race for candy. There was an assortment of candy under an orange cone and the goal was for the kids to run one at a time, pick up the cone, get a piece of candy and run back to tag the next runner. The funny part was that the kids would run as fast as possible to the cone and then sit there trying to decide which type of candy they wanted! :o) Some kids stood there 30 seconds or more trying to decide! :o)

The third event had one person in a sled being pulled by a teammate who would pull the sled through cones and under plastic bars. That game quickly deteriorated and turned into kids trying to knock over cones! :o)

Fourth was a 6 person "ski" - 6 kids climbed onto two long pieces of wood and had to work in unison to ski to the finish line. I helped with this one and it was almost impossible to get 6 kids to push one foot at a time!

There were other events as well but we rushed through the last 3 or 4 events as the kids were all hungry and just wanted to get lunch.

After lunch the kids could skate or play hockey on the frozen lake. Thankfully we borrowed a helmet for Nicholas from Arman and Donna as I could not believe how hard Nicholas would fall! It was obvious that he had tried skating at least once before as he had all the moves down and knew how to put on and walk in skates. But he hasn't quite mastered the skating part! :o) I don't know how to skate either so I was out on the ice in yak-tracks and spent a few hours just picking up kids all over the ice! :o) It was really a lot of fun but I must say I was completely worn out by the time we got home! I've posted a bunch of photos of the event.