If you know us, you've probably heard about our annual 4th of July tradition: The Waterstraut Olympics. Now, this is different than world-wide actual Olympic years. This one happens every year for the past 11 years usually on the 4th of July.
Some years we've been on vacation for the 4th of July (here's looking at you Alaska and Hawaii!), but in those cases we still did them, just a bit late. Last year we did them on the 2nd because of Calib's work schedule. This year, we did them on the third, because it was our last day pool sitting, and the Waterstraut Olympics are more fun in a pool than not.
There's usually between four and five events. While most of them rotate, or are even one and done, one event always remains the same: The Frozen Tshirt Contest. Basically you fold some t-shirts, put them in ziplock bags and fill with water..
...then you freeze them! The idea is the first person to free their shirt from the block of ice and put it on is the winner. This even is so "Famous" we even had a Sattler family version last year because the Sattler's wanted in on it. (There's talk of another Sattler family one this year!)
Also new this year: I have a Cricut machine, to make official shirts. I printed the year everyone won the gold on their shirts. Asa and I never play for medals, so I put Participant on ours.
I considered changing the medals since I could make more official ones with my Cricut. But, they've always been the same lamenated ones since the event began, and I just didn't feel like I could change it now.
The medals for the other events, however, are always changing. In the begining, I made those medals too. But, then it evolved into candy medals. I'd string a resses cup or a three muskateers or a twix (you know for bronze, silver, and gold) onto some yarn to wear. But this year I had a lot of little candy left from other events, so I just made little baggies of candy with the medal attached to those with a ribbon.
Asa and I had lunch over at the pool on the 4th..
And I even made my own Sangria for the day, you know, because I'm a graduate of Sangria University.
A little later the kids got up and wandered over. We were trying to beat the weather (which we did, but barely).
The first event this year was a three in a row pong game. I had gotten these floats from five below for another event and determined they fit ping pong balls well, and so we'd play in rounds, braket style. YOu get three in a row in the little pockets and you move on. It was much harder than it looked. Up first was Calib and Peyton.
Asa and I had played a play-in game before the kids got there, and I won. So, I played against Hayden, and he beat me (nobody took any pictures, apparently- since that's usually my job). So, Peyton and Hayden advanced to the gold medal match.
It was close, but Peyton came out victorious.
Instead of bringing anything over for the meal stand, I determined the stairs to the pool would make a fine podium. Your pool pong winners...
Next up was a game we called "Duck Duels". We got out the pool squirt guns, some orange cones, and some rubber duckies. You started in the middle of the pool, back to back...
... took a couple steps and turned. First person to get the ducks from their opponents side of the pool off the cones was the winner. You could spend time blocking your opponents water stream if you wanted, but you didn't win until all of yours got knocked off. Asa beat Peyton in the first round.
And Hayden took Calib down in the second round.
Asa and Hayden faced off in the gold medal match..
..and Asa was victorious there too. We opted not to do a bronze medal match and instead award an extra bronze. I made a few extra bags for this specific circumstance, so everyone was cool with it. The weather did not look like it was going to hold out much more, so we needed to get moving.
The next event is one we've done the last few years. I have all these little pool noodles cut up with letters on them (I keep a whole bag of them all year just for this event). They have a couple minutes to create the biggest word they can.
Now, you may be thinking this is easy, they can just think of long word ahead of time and make sure they know how to spell it. Easy. But, with the time limit, you don't know what letters you'll find. Plus, we throw all kinds of other floaty items in the pool to make it a little trickier to get to all the noodles. The time limit can also stop some people up. This year we only gave them two minutes. Calib and Hayden tried to go for a long word they had thought of ahead of time. But, they couldn't find the letters in that time, leaving Peyton as the winner with a three letter word.
Up next, we played a new game debuting in 2022: Hungry, Hungry Hippos. This one was played in teams of two. One person would be the "hippo" on the pool float, and the other would move the person around by holding their legs. Hayden and Asa teamed up, and Peyton and Calib worked together.
I took a couple of dollar store laundry baskets I had that were the same size, and gave them to the guys on the floats. The object was to collect the most pool noodle pieces in three minutes as you could. You could only move your laundry basket in an up and down motion (no side collection), and there were a lot of other things in the pool from the other events that you needed to be careful to avoid. If you got too much other stuff in there, there wasn't room for as many pool noodles.
This one was hilarious to watch!
After the three minutes, we took the baskets, being careful not to loose any collected noodles, and counted out who had the most.
Hayden and Asa took home the gold, and Peyton and Calib had to settle for silver.
And then it was time for the frozen t-shirt contest! We grabbed the shirts out of the freezer (I find the best way to do this is to rip off the top of the ziplocks, but leave them on until right before you're ready to play).
I handed out the shirts, and everyone got to trying to get their shirt out as fast as possible .
I've only played this year and last year. And, I could probably do better if I didn't spend so much time taking pictures.
But you have to document the frozen t-shirt contest!
Asa, for probably the 12th time, put his on first. But, he doesn't play for a medal.
Everyone else kept working..
Hayden and Peyton got theirs free...
...and on just seconds apart.
Technically Hayden got his on first. But, there was some nefarious activity, includng using the pool jet, which isn't specifically stated illegal in the rules, but is kind of. Plus, he literally ripped his shirt in multiple places.
Peyton was seconds behind, and everyone kind of agreed (including Hayden), that he should get the gold. I think I'm going to need a whole set of rules for this thing. If you rip your shirt, you should at least get a time penalty.
I got mine on, but Calib was still struggling. Real talk, the weather was coming in hot. Or, cold, really, the wind picked up and it dropped like ten degrees. We had to get moving asap, our summer storms are no joke.
I quickly handed out medals (and even screwed them up here- if you notice they are on the podium correct, but Hayden is wearing the bronze and Hayden the silver). We fixed it later, but this was my bad. As the rain started, Calib didn't even have his shirt on.
We headed home to wait out the rain, which was a good couple of hours. We headed back over for some snacks and drinks before dinner.
We enjoyed one last trip to the pool during our pool sitting, and played one last set of volleyball games to determine who got the extra bag of candy medals (It went to Asa).
For dinner that night, Asa grilled us steaks, which were delicious.
On the fourth, we were invited over to the neighbors for some food and pool time with them.
Though eventually we got rained out of that too.
We didn't go see any fireworks or anything that night. We mostly sat around keeping the dogs calm. Poor Etta had a rough day between the storms and the fireworks.
That's it for the 4th of July. There's always a sort of relief for me this time of year. Between birthdays and anniversaries and events like the fort, and the Olympics, I'm always a little burnt out by the time we make it to this part of the year. It takes me a little time of no "Extra" events to have to plan to decompress. I'm there now (thus the blog catching up), and now my attention will turn to getting in a Father's Day celebration (aka Hobbit Day), since we missed that when we were on our anniversary trip, our dating/engagement anniversary next week, my birthday, and an Ohio trip!
Next Up: Big Work News!
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