Keeping Up with the Johnsons: Amazing Race 2015

A few weeks ago,we joined forced with our good friends Jeff and Melissa to participate in a super fun event put on by The Point, a local charity organization on Johns Island. There are challenges all around the Charleston area and you must decipher clues to (hopefully!) find your next destination. We have done it in years prior and were cheated out of first place, due to the fact one team had bikes and we had to run! We did not take the title back but had so much fun trying!

We enjoyed it so much that it inspired me to plan this type of event for Rhett's birthday! Thus, the first ever Headquarters Island Amazing Race was born! I had so much fun planning it, making clues, designing challenges, but I must admit, it was a lot of work! I am happy to say it was a raging success and I think that it may become an annual tradition!
His birthday proper was on Monday and we met the rest of the family at a Mongolian bbq type place we recently discovered. Filling your own bowl with your choice of meat, vegetables, seasonings is fun! The race was on Friday and was a great kickoff to a very, very fun Memorial Day weekend.

We had a great turn out and had 5 teams of 5, all with coordinating bandannas. Because of the wide age range, I made the teams "fair" with one older kid (team leader) and one little kid. All of the team members had to be present at the destination to start the next challenge, so this resulted in the bigger kids encouraging, carrying, or doing whatever was necessary to help the little ones. The race started with each team receiving an envelope with their first clue, which required them to put pictures of Rhett in chronological order to reveal an important date they had to remember the entire race, Rhett's date of birth, of course!

After completing this challenge, teams were given their next clue which sent them somewhere on the island to perform their next challenge. I routed all the teams differently (but fairly!) to various places all around the neighborhood. Challenges included working together to complete a puzzle, cutting out letters to spell HAPPY BIRTHDAY RHETT (in three different colors!), transferring water from bucket to bucket with only a sponge, putting worms (cooked spaghetti) into a large can, finding a hidden balloon, and finding and gathering ribbons with letters to decipher "Rhett" and return to our house for the final challenge of finding a coin with a special date on it (remembering Rhett's DOB).

Luckily, the birthday boy's team won!!