My mother loves holidays. Christmas is huge fun. Thanksgiving is a feast to feed the masses. And Easter is like a Spring festival. Ever since I was small, Easter has been a huge deal. And it was odd to me because we were never a highly religious family, though my father has read the bible five times all the way through. But my mother learned the importance of keeping the family together (all 5,000 of us, or so it seems) and the easiest way to do that is to throw a party. And this Easter was no different. My kids have both learned the true significance of Easter, but they also look forward to it as the day the Easter Bunny comes over to give them goodies.

We were worried about the rain pouring down on Sunday, but mom figured it would start later in the afternoon. Plus, she had a game to be played. Mom likes to make these parties/BBQ’s fun. So we’ll have a family softball game, water balloon toss, or the Amazing Race. Yes, she created the Amazing Race for our Easter Sunday. But if it started raining, all her creative planning would be for naught. And she would probably be sad. So we were praying for sunshine.

It didn’t rain, but damn it sure was windy. After a few hours of eating and hanging out with the family, including my newest baby cousin Miya Santo, the Easter Egg Hunt was to start. The Aunts love hiding the eggs for the little cousins, and then finding them for them. They get caught up in the excitement and usually give all the best hiding spots away. JJ and Brian were smart. They just followed their Aunts because they knew that’s where the eggs would be.

Cousin Yao

My mom was pacing with anticipation. She knew that unless we did it soon, the rains would come and ruin the Amazing Race. The hard part is gathering all the family together to explain the rules. But when my mom said the prize would be $50 bucks, all the cousins listened intently. But even though they listened, they must’ve been thinking about the $50, because some of them still got the rules wrong. Basically, there were 8 events. You had a partner and you would do 4 of the events in tandem with your partner. You had to do 2 events yourself and your partner had to do 2 events. Now if you had a male/female partnership like I did, this was a little tough, because many of these were sports events and if you know my wife, her idea of playing a sport is doing the dishes and being timed. So there was some strategy involved. The 8 events were (and you had to do them in order):

1. 1/4 mile run (in tandem)
2. 10 push-ups (solo)
3. Shoot a free throw (solo)
4. Catch a pop up (solo)
5. Hula hoop for 30 seconds (solo)
6. Jump rope (in tandem)
7. Word scramble (in tandem)
8. Hard boiled egg eating (in tandem)

I had to decide what the wife could do better. Catch a pop up, or shoot a free throw. Immediately she said she wanted to shoot a free throw, so I had faith.

The teams were a mix and match of cousins and Aunts and Uncles. The teams were as follows:

• Me and the wife
• My sister and cousin Nini
• Cousins Matt and Kevin
• Brother and sister duo of Dave and Nicky
• Aunt Annette and Uncle Kim
• Cousins Brit and Tiana
• Cousin Mike and his wife Kim

Bruce and Julie, the new proud parents couldn’t do it because it got too cold for the baby and they had to leave. I thought it was a fun idea, but when my mom mentioned the $50, my competitive juices started to flow. I thought there was a really good shot that the wife and I could win it. I was most worried about the Matt and Kevin duo and the Davey and Nicky team. All four are young and athletic, except for maybe Kev, but he’s game. I figured that if we could beat those two teams, we’d be in the running for it.

We decided that the wife would run her 1/4 mile first. She would tag me, and then I would run. Once I was done, we could go onto the next challenge. Matt and Davey were amped and ready to go and out of the blocks they were in full sprint. Tiana was in third and then my wife, Nini, Annette, and Kim were within close distance of each other. The last part of the lap, Davey fell and allowed Matt to close out his run far in the lead. Davey got back up and finished and Tiana was next. I told the wife to pace herself because we weren’t going to win the event based on this event. There were others we were going to clean house on. She tagged me and I made significant progress and though we were still in fourth when I finished my lap, we were in striking distance. I felt good about our chances.

9th Place Out Of 8 Teams

I was spent because I didn’t follow my own advice. But the wife wouldn’t let me walk to the next event and I jogged to the push-up event. I did the 10 greatest push-ups of my life, but the wife was still unsatisfied and was saying I wasn’t moving fast enough. We finished that and jogged to the basketball court. Where we made up a lot of the lead was in the jog to the next event. A lot of the others were spent and walked to the next event. Also, some of them didn’t understand the rule that in a tandem event, both members had to be present. Matt was first to the hoop, but his partner Kev was walking and Matt’s baskets didn’t count until Kev got there. Carol made her second shot and we were immediately in second place. We had to jog back to the pop up catch and I caught it immediately, leaving Carol to do the Hula Hoop. Now in practice, Carol was failing miserably at this. The only way you could go onto the next event was to do it continuously for 30 seconds. In practice, Carol was doing it for about 5 seconds. But she started getting a few pointers from Hula Hoop experts and was getting good. But now this was pressure. I paced alongside the longest 30 seconds of my life while she was hooping. Auntie Margie was watching her clock with great determination and Carol continued to hoop. Finally, Margie gave us the OK to move on and we went to the jumprope event.

The Wife Was Hoopin’

I won’t lie. I’m pretty good with a jumprope. Even the double jump styles. While I can’t double dutch, though Nini and Annette can, I got skills with the jumprope. We only had to jump 10 times together and I immediately jumped in and started. But for some reason, Carol waited. And waited. And measured. And waited, until finally she joined and we did our 10, though I probably did about 15. I could see that Davey and Nicky had already started their word scramble. This was our shot to catch them. I knew if we didn’t catch them here, we would probably lose because Davey could wolf down 4 hard boiled eggs in no time. I hated them and while Carol didn’t think they were half bad, she couldn’t wolf like Davey. We did the word scramble and I thought we were moving quick, but we were stuck on the two longer words. I looked over at Davey and Nicky and they were just about done. We finally got the two words which turned out to be “resurrection” and “Christianity”, but it was too late. However, in a nice twist of events (at least for us anyway), Davey was having problems. He started to feel sick and he couldn’t keep his eggs down. He even puked in his hand only to try to push it back in his mouth to finish it, but he was done. It was me and the wife versus Nicky.

The wife heard Davey puking and she was starting to feel sick herself. So I decided to help her and throw one down. I took one bite and nearly puked myself. I just figured that it wasn’t going to happen for me and I spit out my one bite. I had to root on the wife. Davey must’ve taught Nicky how to wolf because while Carol had one down, Nicky already had 3 down. Carol was able to get another down, but it was too late. Nicky and Davey were the champs. And right as we finished, it was starting to rain. But my mom didn’t care. She got her game in.

The Champs

All the pictures are here below: (and you can click them to make them bigger)

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