depsite the cute photo and smiles above, i bring you sad tidings from pichard-a-thon 2009. as none of you will recall, our “team clarence” had brought home the gold (or in this case, the sparkly pink tree) for two years running. but we couldn’t manage a TREE-peat. and we really did give it our all...
for those of you needing further clarification... the pichard-a-thon is where the descendants of the three pichard brothers (well, really two brothers, marion and clarence, and a younger brother/nephew, david) go head to head in cousin competition. my siblings and i play for our grandfather clarence’s honor. my cousins play for “team david” and “team marion” (also known as team g-daddy). and i think this was the year for “team marion/g-daddy” to bring home the sweet victory because this year saw our wonderful g-daddy’s return to his heavenly home. he must have sent some angels to help his grand and great grand children pull of the coup of the century.... defeating the awesome force that is “team clarence”...
game #1 PINCHING PENNIES... submitted by team clarence. in light of the recessional year and the fact that we all had to do some penny pinching... i thought we would be better at this...
each team submitted 8 players to this game. and each person had one chopstick. they worked in pairs (one minute for each pair) to see how many pennies they could pinch out of the jell-o.
and that team g-daddy was REALLY good at pinching (and flicking pennies) out of the jell-o. they came in with an impressive 41 pennies in 4 minutes.
game #2 submitted by team g-daddy. spell out a holiday word using EVERY member of your team. points for difficulty and for creativity. our team spelled out “pichard-a-thon”. g-daddy spelled “bah humbug”. and team david won this round with its spelling of “santa” while singing “santa claus is coming to town. like we even had a chance of singing a song with “pichard-a-thon” in the lyrics...
game # 3 submitted by team david...
this was a game of skill, stinky shoes, peanut butter, and whistling. and you thought all those things couldn’t go into one event. well, you would be wrong.
12 member of each team participated. 1 blindfolded and 11 without shoes. 11 pairs of their shoes were placed in the trash bag and each person, one a time, ran up to the blindfolded person who had to find their shoes with help from the shoeless elf. then they elf had to put their shoes on, run back to the line, and tag the next person. it is really easy for the blindfolded person when the elf is screaming, “MINE ARE THE BLUE ONES!!!!!”
then the last person in line, once they are wearing their shoes has to run over and eat a peanut butter cracker and whistle jingle bells for the judges. once they have whistled the first line. then they are finished.
team g-daddy won this one too. though rosalea made a valiant whistling effort there at the end for our judge (a family not related to the pichards that comes every year to be impartial and to laugh at all of us.)
and team g-daddy wins the pichard-a-thon for 2009. they were just a little bit excited. good thing there isn’t a penalty for excessive celebrating....
and then we all drink hot chocolate and cider and dip into the 15 crockpots full of soup and stews and we sit and sip and enjoy being together while the kids run around roasted marshmallows and playing night time tag and other dangerous games that they get to play once a year.
family is a wonderful thing.
even when we aren’t officially the “winners” with this history, heritage and support, we are the WINNERS.
but just wait until 2010.
