As you know by my last few posts, I have been cleaning off some SD cards and am finding lots of things I wanted to post about but haven't posted about.
There is something my dad and step-mom do every year at our reunion, at the lake, that makes it so much fun for the grandchildren and now the great-grandchildren.
They have come up with a really creative way to keep the kids entertained for hours in the morning. Mornings are tough when the lake is cold and many parents are not quite ready to go down to the water and watch the kids knowing they will be down there all day and evening.
They came up with an annual pancake making contest. They have always had prizes but I think as the tradition got more popular and the pancakes more elaborate, the prizes have gotten bigger and they give out ribbons as well. 
Because it is getting to be such a fun tradition, this year, they enlisted "judges" and even created a scoring method where each judge will give pancakes number ratings for each area of the contest. 
They have many categories so there can be more winners, but they have a grand-prize, and the top three and then prizes for creativity, flavor, moistness, most toppings, traditional etc. You can really make up as many categories as you need to give everyone a prize. 
The prizes were large amounts of cash which I think is super generous of them since they pay all the fees for the camp ground, golfing, much of the food and other things helping people get there etc. 
It has become a looked forward to event by the kids and they do their research and planning ahead of time so they have everything they need to make their creations and as you can tell by all these individual pictures of the pancakes, the competition was stiff! 
They then tallied the totals for each persons judging sheets and it took a bit more time this year than in the past due to all the different judges but we had lots of fun while waiting doing Karaoke and games. 
I think you could actually do any type of annual contest maybe even sugar cookie decoration, or chili cook-off, or something else entirely, like a painting contest and bring a pad of watercolor paper and a bunch of water color paint sets or something. 
Mainly, the idea is to start an annual tradition where the kids look forward to coming and participating and this just happens to be what they came up with for our family. 
I love that they, (mostly my step-mom whos is like a mother to me) continually come up with such fun things to make ever get together something memorable and enjoyable. We are truly blessed and I count them as a HUGE blessing in my life and my children's lives.
Have a Traditional and Blessed Day!
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