Olympic Games

One weekend, my daughter and I decided it was time we instituted a yearly Olympic games with dad versus daughter - the "Annual Father Daughter Games". This may prove to be a bad decision as she progresses athletically and I get older. Of course it isn’t a real competition and the point is just to have fun but it still adds a bit of excitement for her to be able to beat me on a couple of these. I will probably never win on the ones that make you crawl or duck walk.

Here are some of games we played at the first dad and daughter Olympics. These are basically all field day games that I used to play but are modified to play together.

Fire brigade race – Each person has one bucket with holes in the sides, one large empty bucket at the end and a large full bucket at the beginning. The object is to fill you’re the bucket with holes and use it to transfer as much water as possible from the large full to the large empty buckets. Whoever has the most water after 3 minutes (or x number of trips) wins.

Water balloon sit – Each person grabs a water balloon from a bucket and races to the other end. Sit the water balloon on a towel and pop it using anything but your hands\arms\legs\feet. That basically leaves your rear end. My daughter thought it was funny as heck to see daddy get a huge wet spot on his pants.

Egg or water balloon toss – Stand facing each other. Granny toss a water balloon or (if you are really brave) an egg back and forth. The loser wears the mess.

Tissue box dance – As seen on “minute to win it”. Take an empty tissue box and put 12 ping pong balls in it. Strap it upside down to your waist and place it in the middle of your back. Now using only jiggle or shake movements, try and empty the box. First to empty all twelve wins.

Sorting m&ms – This one is just like it sounds. Take a large bag of m&ms, split it down the middle and race to see who can separate their pile into colors the fastest.

Mini Marshmallow basketball – This is essentially ‘beer pong’ without the beer. Use mini marshmallows and try to see how many baskets you can sink into a plastic cup on the other side of the table.

Hula hoop endurance - Be prepared to lose on this one. To even out the odds though you could modify the rules to allow hooping around your neck or on your arms. It took my daughter a while to quit laughing while dear old dad was shaking his caboose trying to keep the rhythm up which also helped my keep up my end of the competition.

Who knows if we actually will continue this each year but it was funny having the "ceremony" to kick them off. I even let her use a lit birthday candle to light a big one just to make it official.