This past weekend I put together an Amazing Race style Christmas party for my husband’s side of the family. We’ve done Meck Mom’s Halloween Party for the last 6 years and I knew it would be so much fun to do with a Christmas twist! We did it in in downtown Salt Lake City and I kept all locations within the Trax Free Fare Zone, which allowed for us to have teams greater than 6 people and not have to worry about car seats and parking. Plus it was a fairly central location for us.
We sent out this letter ahead of time, with teams assigned and the rules to give everyone a better idea of what they were getting into!
I really thought it would have been fun to include a Front Runner train ticket for everyone to ride into the city on, but well, schedules and my budget wouldn’t allow it. It would have added another element of fun, especially for the train loving kids in the family. It would also have been fun to award points for wearing your team color, ugly sweaters, or even reindeer antlers while playing. Anything to make us stand out and look goofy!
We had 5 clues to solve. All locations had free admission. My awesomely talented brother-in-law put the clues in poem form for me.
At the LDS Family History Library we had to search for birth dates of two of our ancestors.
It’s time to go in search of the ghosts of Christmas past
So fly down to where you do genealogy fast.
Find birthdays for the first three great-great-greats
And how the fourth ancestor got to the States.
Birthdays:
John William Lavender
Julianna Hoke
Anna Barbara Haverly
At City Creek Mall teams had to count the windows in the retractable roof before getting their next clue.
Suzy at the desk will give you a clue
At the place where City Creek helpers help you
But up on the housetop you may have to crane
To give her a count of each window pane
Bonus points were given for finding initials in the Candy Windows that were located on the elephants backside.
You heard that the famous candy windows are back?
Find them to get extra points from Santa’s sack.
You’ll locate initials, but not on a drum,
They’re found on the pachiderm’s rump-pa-pum-pum.
As well as the hangar number in the Deseret Book window.
An airplane hangar in City Creek tucked away
Is where I hear Santa sometimes stashes his sleigh
To the tome of the honeybee is where you must soar
And write down the number you find o’er the door
At the Church History Museum teams had to find who was lost in the phenetiskiscope and report their findings to the front desk for the next clue. There wasn’t a cute poem to go with this, but it was written on the back of a puzzle that they had to put together and then flip to be able to read it.
To determine the winning team each team filled out a scorecard:
Our ending location was Z’Tejas in The Gateway.
Where we snack on trios and cornbread while waiting for everyone to return and then enjoyed delicious desserts while sharing stories of our adventure and enjoying the awards that my sister-in-law had put together.
I realize that this is too late for this year, but wanted to make sure to share it in case you ever happen to be in charge of your family Christmas party!
Kellee says
OMG sooo fun