Family Fun: Walmart Scavenger Hunt

As you've heard me mention before, Monday nights are Family Night in the WhiMSy love home. My girls always know that when Monday nights roll around, it is reserved exclusively for the 4 of us. And it makes me feel pretty happy to see them excited about it.

A lot of Family Night's we'll watch movies or our favorite television shows together. But I've decided to shake things up a bit, get more creative on Mondays. This week I planned a scavenger hunt. And, it was so easy—because there wasn't any "planning" involved. 

Firstly, it was easy to form teams: the 4 of us discussed that after the Family Night hooplah, we were all going out for ice cream. Pazely & the Mr. wanted to go to Cold Stone Creamery. Zoey & I wanted to go to Dairy Queen. Alliances quickly formed & the prize for winning the scavenger hunt was declared: whoever won got to go to the ice cream establishment of their choosing.

And then we made our scavenger hunt lists. We each wrote down 10 things that youwould be able to find at Walmart. And then we folded our secret lists ever so carefully & held tightly to them until we reached the starting point.

The rules: 

• Once we got to Walmart, each team traded lists. (Both teams had a total of 20 items to find.)

• We had 15 minutes to find all, or as many of the items as we could. 

• Teammates MUST stay together! You cannot split up & search for separate clues. 

• Once you found an item on the list, all members on that team must touch the item before crossing it off your list. (For example, you can't see a "clown costume" across the aisle, 3 rows over & declare it found.)

Oh my. The competition was ON! The reality was this: Yes, the Mr. & I each had a tiny-sized human at our side the size of carry-on luggage. But this was a full-on mommy vs. daddy race.

Here are some additional rules I feel I should post:
• You cannot shove old ladies, walking really slowly with their shopping carts, to the side in order to get ahead.

• If you cannot find "a bruised banana" from your list, you cannot intentionally bruise a banana just so you can cross the item off your list.

• If your opponent's have "a garden hose" on their list, you cannot hide all the hoses in Walmart just so they will have troubles finding the item on their list.

• A cactus is not a "pot of flowers".

The perfect thing about this scavenger hunt is that you can set the number of clues, & minutes searching for the clues, to however many or few you want. 

I've also read online where you can form clues this way:

Everyone gets a piece of paper & writes down one clue on their own piece of paper, & then you pass that paper to the right. Then you write down another clue on the piece of paper that was passed to you, & you keep passing & writing until you've totaled your desired number of clues. Everyone has their own (& different) set of things to find.

Zoey & I were walking so fast & scrambling to get all of our clues. For one clue, we had to find milk. We quickly flew back to the dairy case, where loads of people were congesting the aisle. I opened the fridge door, & we both reached in & touched a gallon of 2% milk. She was sure that people thought we were weird. I didn't tell her this, but: yes, I'm sure they did.

The most upsetting thing that happened during the scavenger hunt was that I lost. (haha!)
Pazely & the Mr. won. THIS time around. UGH! They got us flustered with a clue that we couldn't find: G.I. Joe toys. Zoey & I couldn't find any, so I tried convincing the Mr. that the store didn't have any, & so Zoey & I REALLY should have won. After the hunt, the Mr. searched for about 8 minutes in the toy aisle without finding them either. And then he got a sales person to help him. 

And they found G.I. Joe toys. 

CRAP.

The hardest thing Pazely & the Mr. had to find on their list was "a packet of carrot seeds." When writing up their list, I honestly wasn't thinking about what season it is & how there wouldn't be any more seeds for sale. Apparently Santa ate them. Because the garden center was FILLED with Christmas stuff!!!! Holiday cards & faux flocked trees & decorations galore.

In the end, we were all winners, really.

The Mr. kept telling me that, "No, we're all really not."

Oh, we had so much fun! To be honest, half of our crew were unsure about this whole scavenger hunt thing & I think they convinced themselves they weren't going to have a good time. But everyone had a blast! I think the girls are looking forward to what fun awaits them on future Family Nights.

♥