Swamp People Days

I am sort of at a loss to know how to even begin explaining how our family reunions work and why one might be designated as "swamp people days"; however I will try.  Lets start by explaining that my older sister missed her calling in life.  She should have been a party planner instead of a baby carrier/food stirrer.  She inherited all of the enthusiasm that was supposed to be portioned out amongst 7 different children.  This combined with a recent fascination with the show "Swamp People" naturally lead to the outcome of a major party a'la de swamp. This is one of the reasons there has not been a post in  a while; we were in Wyoming getting in touch with our backwoods selves and as everyone knows, they don't have computers or the internet in Wyoming. 

 Swamp fruit anyone? (It's just an amazing caramel apple with white chocolate dyed green. Delish)

 First activity, making personalized trucker hats.

 Take a box of foam front-mesh backed hats, some freezer paper to make stencils, cloth markers and paints and oooh-boy, I gauronteee.

The next day started out with some very nice family pictures up in the hills that will not be viewed at this time because of sheer clash of class (say that 5 times fast) might cause visual and mental catastrophe.  

But once that frilly, sissy stuff was done with, it was into costume an on with the activities.

 And yikes, were there ever costumes.

 yes, the belly is costume

 Everyone needed temp tattoos to make it all feel right.

 The first activity, I should say competition because there were teams and points and winners and such, was shooting alligators that were hanging from a rope on a pulley system.  Like at the carnival, the gators would go back and forth and you tried to shoot as many in your team's color as you could in 10 seconds, or until you used all your 20 shots, which ever came first.

 Sad to say, the childless wonders won this one.

 The next event was a water based obstacle course.  Run to the canoe, get in, launch, and then paddle around the pond collecting rubber snakes, a bottle of moonshine from the still, a floating pool-toy gator and three gators that took the bait (a cinder block tied to a rope, which is actually very difficult to hoist out of the muddy bottom of a pond into a narrow canoe), and getting back to the shore and out of the boat in 3 minutes.  

 Off to a good start here

 Starting to have problems fetching the snakes

 A good effort but they did not get back within the time limit = dead.

 Remember how I said pulling a cinder block into a canoe was a little difficult?  Yeah, it throws the entire balance of the boat off and if the others in the boat aren't playing along...gator food

 gator food

 Redneck bidet

Since half of the participants were already soaking wet, the next event matched Swamp People with the Polar Bear Club.  Wyoming had already had two weeks of hard frost in the mornings, so an above ground pool has little protection from frigidity, making it an excellent addition for a good time.  There were dozens of little cards with pictures of gators, snakes, catfish, empty hooks and gators with torn hides that were all worth different points thrown into the pool.  Your task, go git um!

 KyleJo here using true redneck fashion and jumping in still wearing his trucker hat.  Very good form.

Team 2's turn

 It's about here that you think, "wait, what am I doing and why?"

 By this point everything is numb so what the heck

 The yungins needed to participate as well, so they "helped" decorate cupcakes, which is yungin' for eat straight sprinkles and frosting off of a cupcake.

 No one "helps" better than our Loreli.

 Here's what was in mind though

 Good times, although I never found where to get some dam bait. 

Stay tuned for some pretty "swampalicious" videos.