It Was Amazing!

Yesterday Dave and I partook in "The Amazing Race". We bought a spot for this in our youth service auction that was held last May. Greg and Megan Tilton hosted the party and did an AMAZING job. I cannot even begin to imagine the work that went into putting this together. Megan did such a great job, and while at times I wanted to strangle her for some of the stuff we had to do, it was a lot of fun and such a great time was had by all. It was a long and grueling day (we put over 120 miles on our car and several miles on our feet), but so much fun. At the end of the day we all got to enjoy a scrumptious dinner made lovingly by Megan's mom, Lorrie-I love that lady. Thank you, Tiltons for such a fun adventure. I wish I'd taken more pics!!!

The Pink team (yes, pink. Can you tell Sophie assigned race colors?)--Dave and me:


The Blue team---Sandra and Richard Greene (why weren't they the green team?):


The Orange team--Guy and Jena Fish:


The Red team--Ben and Angela Quinney:


The Yellow Team--Erin and Darren Rodabough:


The Green Team (Alex and Katie):

Oops. I never got a picture of them :(

The helpers--Addison Tuttle and Sophie Chapman:




Greg Tilton (I can't believe I never got a pic of Megan) greeting us at the vineyard task:


Driving to the vineyard task. This is still early in the race, thus the smile is still on my face (and I'm not completely stinky and sweaty yet):


Oh I wish I'd taken more pics, we just got swept up in the competitiveness. Here's the run-down of what we had to do:

1. Play boules (french game of throwing metal balls to target to see how close you get). The closest one got their clue first. Everyone else had to do another round to see who got their clue next and so on until everyone got clues.
2. We went to a Korean family's home where each had to accomplish a task. Using chopsticks Dave had to pick colored rice out of a bowl and arrange it on an outline of a Korean flag (this was tricky--glad he got that one). I had to eat a bowl of a Korean delicacy "Kimchi". It was spicy, but actually I quite liked it.
3. We had to drive to a vineyard and find a race flag among the rows of grapes. Dave found ours---good job, babe!
4. We had to go to a horse stable and clean a horse saddle and tack. Ugh, I hated this one. It was hot and sticky and stinky. I was dripping with sweat by the time we were done and my hands were all covered with the leather spray we had to use. It also stunk that although we were the first team to get to this task, we were one of the last to leave.
5. We had to go to a park pavilion where a gift was waiting for us to open. We could only use our hands to open the gift (no teeth). The gift was covered in layers and layers on duct tape which make it pretty tricky. Once opened, we had to blow up a balloon and make a balloon hat following the included instructions.
6. Our first pit stop was next where we got to go have Bubble Tea (Korean slushy) and rest up.
7. Drive down to the Arch and find a couple (Billy and Crystal Hunter) for our next clue.
8. Go to the Metrolink station and take the metro to the zoo. The problem with this one is that the metro stop by the zoo is really nowhere near the zoo. So we had to figure out how to get from there to the zoo. Some found a cab. We were not so lucky, but we did convince some very nice strangers to drive us there.
9. Once at the zoo we had to find another couple (Shane and Sharla Hoyt) and go around to a couple of different zoo exhibits to answer some questions. Then we had to take our answers back to the Hoyts, and if correct, get our next clue.
10. We had to make our way back to the Metro and take it to Union Station. We were not so lucky to find a cab or hitch a ride, so we WALKED (I'm tired now just writing about it).
11. Once at Union Station we had to find a stained glass window of three allegorical figures and what they represented. We then had to find a lady in a red scarf (Sophie) and tell her our answer to get our next clue.
12. We had to take the Metro back to the Old Courthouse in downtown St. Louis and count the stars in the top of the dome of the building.
13. We had to go back to the couple at the Arch and tell them the correct number of stars to get our next clue. Then we had to complete a sudoku puzzle and use some of the numbers to fill out the spaces with directions to our next clue.
14. We went to Laumeier sculpture park where we had to follow clues to find a hidden treasure and stamp our book to prove we'd found the letter box. We then had to show the stamped book to a couple (Shane and Sharla again) to get our next clue.
15. Go back to the Tiltons for a fabulous dinner....race over. We came in dead last! Oh well, we had a lot of fun and that's all that matters.