March Madness

About a month Spring finally hit Arizona and my friend Karen invited some friends to join them for dessert at their park one Sunday. Spring doesn't last long in Arizona, and we all agreed we should have another dessert night soon before the weather got unbearable.

Now, if you know me at all you know that I think everything is better if there's a theme and a challenge. Seeing as it was right around March Madness time, I suggested we make the next dessert night into a competition and quickly set up an ESPN league for everyone. The winner would decide the theme and who had to bring which dessert.(Sadie picked BYU to win the whole thing)

At the same time I was in a very competitive March Madness league with my family as well, where my sister and I had done a lot of thorough research by clicking the "Pick the Expert Picks" box which automatically filled in our brackets. I was pretty sure that I ("the experts") knew what I was (they were) doing so I might have started some good natured trash talking. Mostly geared towards Mike Bryner because he likes the Utes and they weren't even IN the competition.

Never before have my kids loved March Madness this much. Maybe it was because Jimmer was playing and BYU was doing pretty well, or maybe it was because they were tracking the brackets hoping someone in our family would win. . . but my family went basketball crazy in March.

Well it was a crazy year with lots of upsets and none of us won, which didn't bother me too much. I didn't care who won, as long as it wasn't Mike Bryner -- who picked Notre Dame to win the whole thing. Unfortunately, he still came freakishly close to winning and I was in panic watching the UConn game. If they pulled it out, Karen would have enough points to push Mike out of first and I wouldn't have to wear red shirts for the rest of the year or paint UTES rule on my grass. Luckily for us, UConn pulled through and Karen decided she didn't just want dessert, she wanted a whole party. She had put together some Minute to Win It games for a party that had never been used and since she hates planning parties, she was happy to hand everything over to us and bask in her winner awesomeness.

I give you the teams:

Karen's only request was that the Bryner's be the Blue team and show some Cougar Pride. I just about died when a Zoobie mom and Robbie Boscoe walked in. I always appreciate a good sport! Sadie even had purple sunglasses. She was FULL of team spirit and definitely happy to be on the Purple Team with the "Roneys."No, we did not win. We did look fierce, though.

We squeezed in about 5 games between dinner and sunset, just enough so everyone could do one. My favorite was watching the kids transfer cotton balls between bowls using vaseline and their noses. The prize for the winning team was cotton candy.

And the hardest one has to have been the cup stacking game. The boys were suppose to build a tower out of plastic cups with cards in between each layer and then pull the cards out until the cups were all stacked inside of each other. Maybe if we used the red plastic cups next time??

In the end, Red ruled the day, but the best part had to be watching the kids get into everything. This was definitely the longest competition, but made for a fun month.