Fun for Free

It doesn't get much better than having TONS of fun with the family for FREE! All I had to do was search my house for a few items:

1. Balloons
2. Toothpicks
3. Marshmallows
4. Yarn
5. Straws
6. Tape

Ok, ok. I had to go buy marshmallows and balloons. So, it wasn't exactly free.

The first thing we did was "build things with marshmallows and toothpicks" contest. It was gals against boys, which is NOT a fair contest. The hubby builds things all the time. He can build just about anything. Me? I can barely put Lego's together!

Here are the kiddos getting ready to build

We decided on a few rules and began working on our toothpick/marshmallow masterpieces. The girls, of-course, wanted to build a castle. The boys were very secretive on what they were building. Us gals kept trying to peek at their creation but those boys were not letting us see very much of what they were doing! The little we saw seemed like theirs wasn't going to be strong and one of our rules was that the structure must be sturdy.  I was having such a hard time trying to come up with a design for our castle but I finally decided to just go very simple, hoping that ours would at least be sturdy. I knew ours wouldn't be as intricate or look nearly as cool as the boys. Finally it was times up! It was time to reveal our creations and pick a winner!
This was our castle:

The girls castle

And this was the their airplane:

Boys Airplane

It was clearly obvious who won. Like I said, the boys had a huge unfair advantage. Their airplane was awesome!! Our castle......was not. Our family believes in winners and losers, and we certainly lost. Gracie is very competitive so she was mad at me for not being able to produce as cool a creation as her daddy. Next time we need to have a girls vs boys gymnastics or singing contest!

The next thing we did was "balloon on yarn" race. It's very simple:

1. Put a straw through yarn and string it across the room.
2. Tape a blown up (untied) balloon to the straw.
3. Let go of the balloon and watch it race across the yarn!

Ready to race!

The hubby ready to race

We had such a fun night! The kids still talk about it! And I'm still picking up toothpicks!