iron chef + bingo + yard sale-ing

In addition to our Alice in Wonderland party, 

my family spent a few days last weekend continuing our "Great Staycation of 2012." 

[Since we all don't have enough money to go on a fun trip this summer, we've been creatively finding fun things to do at home or around town. It's been a blast!]

We played Human Bingo, participated in an Iron Chef tournament and had a Yard Sale competition.

On Friday night, we went to City Creek and filled out Bingo cards with different kinds of people we had to see.

Brans and I were the first to get Bingo - then we played for Blackout.

As soon as our time limited expired, we met at the fountains in City Creek to watch their nightly show, set to music. It was fun. And yes, that is fire in the middle of the fountain. It's so beautiful. And so amazing that we've figured out a way to sync water to music. Awesome.

On Saturday morning, we woke up early and split into teams. During the week, we thought of things we needed and made a list of items we'd like to find. Each team got $20 to spend and 3 hours to find as many things on the list as possible.

We didn't do so well with the list - and Brans and I spent a little bit extra, but the haul we ended up with was pretty great. Mostly things we needed - plus two fun music things to add to our collection.

After our Yard Sale Escapade, we came back to our house to watch the Olympic Opening Ceremonies. (We recorded it to watch later sans commercials. We so love modern technology. Rewinding and fast-forwarding TV is marvelous.) I love the Olympics! But more on that later...

Then, we split up into three teams [again - each time, different teams] 

and began our Iron Chef competition.

Our ingredients:

Our task:

To create a complete meal using all of these ingredients.

main course, side/appetizer and dessert.

It was really fun to see what everyone came up with. 

It was an eclectic meal, for sure, but everything was delicious and everyone had fun in the kitchen.

As always, we ate too much food, but it was oh, so tasty.

I know I say this all. the. time. 

but I really do have an amazing family.

I'm so grateful that we all get along so well,

and that we can have so much fun together.

"We don't have much, but we've got us..."

Go team!