Schultz Party of Four

Trivia Night Explained...Numerous inquiries about the details of our trivia party have prompted me to share all the ins-and-outs of our Night O'Fun. First I will admit that I am a control freak, so there was much assigning and requesting of participation on my part, be warned.

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Teams: Our family of 24+ the littles was split into four teams by generational groups basically. I assigned each team a color that I hoped would be easy enough to find coordinating outfits for (Red, Gold, Black and Green).x

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First Round: Trivia

A month or so before the party I solicited trivia from everyone via email. Eventually I received at least one bit of random trivia from each participant... here's a smattering:

- The movie playing when my uncle first met my aunt (One Flew Over the Coo-Coo's Nest)

- Brandon's childhood nickname (Rusty)

- The collection my cousin has (erasers)

- The beauty pageant my mom won as a little girl (Little Miss Antioch)

- My brother-in-law's numerous hair styles of yore (mullet, buzz cut, rat tail)
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Then I chose the best fact from each person to craft into a tricky multiple-choice question. These were projected on the wall in a Jeopardy format for all of the teams to guess. The leftover fun-facts everyone sent were used at the start of the game to introduce each player, "Up next is Ray who used to play for the 49ers...flag football team!"

Second Round: Puzzle Construction

I wanted the second round to involve problem solving and constructing of some sort of puzzle. Carolyn received a cardboard house you can color on for her birthday. As I was fumbling with the construction I realized this was the perfect 'puzzle'. To increase the difficulty I removed the pieces from the box (therefore no instructions as well) and put them in a black plastic bag which each team had to open, determine what the puzzle was and assemble as quickly as possible.

There were a few hiccups with this plan. First, and most importantly, because my photographer was also a participant he had no interest in bailing on his team to capture the moment. Hence, no photos. Secondly, the littles wanted to play in the houses before they were complete, hindering the Green Team considerably. And lastly, the space required for each team meant they had to separate into different rooms of the house, which left me scrambling to verify the first place finisher.

That being said, it was totally worth it and great fun. I wouldn't change a thing.
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Round Three: Photo Memory
Ever since my Grandma passed away unexpectedly last year, I have had her photo albums sitting next to my desk. I finally decided it was time to open them up and explore the happy memories of Christmases gone by. I scanned about 50 images of anything Christmas I could find. I had the images all blown up and reprinted at Walgreens, then I attached them to the wall with sticky-tack (one of Carolyn's favorite words).

In order to make a game of the pictures, I also created a video to the Sara Groves song "To Be With You". The video was basically a 4 minute montage of some of the images on the wall.
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At the end of the video each team had to identify which pictures had been featured in the video. To facilitate this I had affixed a small number to the corner of each photo
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The teams exchanged lists of photos and scored each other. It worked out well and the photos of the intense scoring faces are priceless.

In the end Team Gold (the matriarchs) came out victorious. Though I have had a few complaints filed that claim my scoring for Round Three skewed the playing field considerably. Fair enough, it was not for money so no one is too upset, but if we were to up-the-ante next year I'll have to really think through the point system.