Field Day

One of my big projects this past spring was coordinating Field Day for our homeschool co-op. As the co-op's PE teacher who the students liked to call "Mrs. Sports", it seemed only fitting that I would be the one to coordinate Field Day.  The job seemed simple enough.  I merely needed to plan eight events for approximately eighty students, recruit volunteers, purchase equipment and prizes, communicate instructions, coordinate logistics, establish a smooth process flow between events, and prepare back-up plans in case of possible failure modes.  Those efforts took some time, but the hardest part was finding the Field Day location reserved by our director.  I had never been to this particular county park before, but Google maps and GPS got us to the correct park in just under an hour.  We downloaded a worthless map of the park, so we thought we were good to go.  Unfortunately, the parking area seemed much further from the reservation area than we had anticipated.  So, my husband and I carried enormous boxes of equipment (perhaps 30-50 pounds each) on our heads as we walked to the reservation spot. We walked and walked. We stopped to rest our arms from the heavy awkward loads.  We walked some more but could not find the reserved area.  There were no signs.  We asked people there who seemed more familiar with the park, but they had no clue where that particular shelter could be located. We walked from one end of the park to the other.  I called the county recreation department for help, but received no answer.  Our cell phone GPS maps had no clue where we should go either. We had arrived at the park early enough to allow ourselves one hour to set-up.  We were exhausted, and the boxes were falling apart by the time we finally found the reserved shelter, and by then we only had 15 minutes to set-up all the events.

With help from others who were arriving by that time, we got it all set up, and the events went smoothly.  The kids had great fun, and I was amused at the differences between our two kids.  Our right-brained first born wore expressions of great determination at each event while our son just wanted to have fun without much concern over winning.  He even dropped the water balloon on purpose at the balloon toss event because he wanted the pleasure of having cool water splash all over him on that warm afternoon.  Look for photos in the collages below of each child at the balloon toss game for a fun contrast.

Miss Determination

Right Brained Girl wins the race!

Girls Boys just wanna have fun!