Tuesday, February 12, 2013

Valentine's Party

In my opinion, Valentine's Day is one of the hardest holidays to plan an activity for, especially with a bunch of young single adults. You don't want anything too awkward, but you still want everyone to have fun. This year we started off with a get to know you Bingo while we waited for everyone to get there. It helped get people interacting for the few minutes we played and it was fun to get to know something new about other people in the ward. The boards had 25 squares with things such as "doesn't like chocolate" or "doesn't have a Facebook account." Then each person had to try to get all of their squares signed off by a person who they were true for. It was fun and quick and got people moving and talking.

After that we moved into our main game, Truth or Dare (PG rated). We split everybody up into 5 groups and went each group sent one person up to spin our wheel. We downloaded an iPad app as our spinner that let us customize our wheel. We had 3 categories on our wheel: Truth, Dare, and Team Challenge. Each category had a box filled papers for possible truths or dares and the group would then pick out which one they were going to do. We had about 3 people from each group answer for a truth and it was worth 1 point. We used questions such as:
  • When did you get your first kiss?
  • Tell your worst date story.
  • What is your favorite love song and why?
  • Have you ever snuck out of your house? Tell the story.
  • Describe your dream proposal.
Dares were either worth 1 point or, for more difficult or embarrassing ones, we called them Double Dares and they were worth 2 points. The people participating in each dare varied from 2 people to the whole group depending on what was asked. We used dares like:
  • Rub noses with someone on your team.
  • Serenade someone with a love song.
  • Make up a rap about someone on your team.
  • Give us your best hula dance.
  • Eat a ketchup packet
The Team Challenge was completed at the end of each round (each group had taken a turn) and worth 3 points. Some of the challenges we did were:
  • Who can eat a pudding cup the fastest without using their hands
  • Fluffy Bunny challenge
  • Who can stand barefoot in the snow the longest
  • Role play the best pick-up line
  • Guys putting makeup on the girls.
Everyone had a lot of fun with only a few awkward moments in there. Overall it was a success.

Tubing at Camp Tracy

Recently our ward rented out Camp Tracy up Millcreek Canyon in Salt Lake. The rental comes with access to the lodge (which is big) and the tubing hill. We had people bring soup in crockpots for dinner that we served with rolls and butter. Those who didn't want to tube stayed inside and played games in the lodge. The lodge is very big and nice! It has a nice big kitchen, bathrooms with plumbing, tables and chairs, and a fireplace that you need to bring your own wood for. The tubing hill is close to the lodge and is lit up at night. Only tubes are allowed on the hill so we also brought up an air compressor to fill everyone's tubes up. The tubing hill is pretty long and steep so you go pretty fast. You hike up the side of the mountain to the top of the hill and then it runs through the trees and out to the clearing at the bottom. They give out vouchers so it's free to drive up during the day, or if you go at night the guard station closes at 6:00 pm and then it's free anyway. It cost $50/hour to rent out both the tubing hill and the lodge which is really cheap. Camp Tracy is owned by the Boy Scouts of America so you can find their contact information on their website.