After we were finished putting our testimonies in the books, we broke up into our color groups and played Minute to Win It. For those of you unfamiliar with the game show on TV, you have some silly, somewhat ridiculous challenges that you are required to finish in one minute. On the show it’s one contestant competing against the clock for money. At Youth Conference we did it in teams and competed for ribbons. We had three attempts at each of 12 stations to accomplish the task in less than a minute. I did get some pictures of this, but I think I’ll do them all in a slideshow so you can look if you choose. The stations all had some pretty funny names, only a few of which I remember, but I’ll make it so you get the general idea. The first one was called Paper Scraper. We had 18 index cards folded in half and 9 index cards that were flat. We had to make three skyscrapers 9 stories high by putting the two folded ones down facing each other and then the flat ones on top stacked up. We did pretty well, got two out of three ribbons. The next one was called spoon frogs. We each had 3 spoons and had to flip them into a bin in the middle of the table. We had to get 12 spoons in before the minute was up. I was really good in the beginning. I got 2 spoons in right away, but beginners luck was the key. Luckily the team came through to help and we got all 3 ribbons in record time. The third one was something about blowing…. We each had to blow up a balloon and then using the air in the balloon, we had to knock 150 Styrofoam cups off the tables. Green Team holds the record! 150 cups in 16 seconds. We also got 3 ribbons on that one. The next one was something to do with a catapult and a broom. We had 3 paper plates hanging half way off the table holding a marshmallow. One person had to drop a broom handle just right to hit the plate to catapult the marshmallow and then the rest of the team was standing back with cups and had to catch 3 marshmallows before time ran out. We got 2 ribbons. The next one was Ping Tac Toe. It was probably the hardest one ever. We had to bounce ping pong balls into water filled cups alternating colors and try to make a tic tac toe. We didn’t get any ribbons, but I got really good at fielding ping pong balls! The next one had some catchy name that I can’t remember, but the main gist of it was we had to hold a spaghetti noodle in our mouth and without using our hands we had to pick up penne pasta on our spaghetti and hold it there. The 12 of us had to get 40 penne pastas to win. The catch… if your spaghetti noodle breaks, nothing counts and you start over. It was pretty intense, but we ended up getting all three of our ribbons. The next one was called Face the Cookie. You take an Oreo, place it on your forehead and move it down your face into your mouth with no hands. This one was very funny to watch and I got a couple of really great pictures. One of them is the second counselor in our bishopric and I just had to laugh. Such great facial expressions! Our team wasn’t really that great at it though and out of the 12 we needed each round, the highest we got was 6. No ribbons for Face the Cookie. Next we had to put together cereal boxes that had been cut into puzzle like pieces. Luckily it was square pieces, so not too hard, but there were 5 separate boxes we had to figure out and on the last round, we were working on the Cocoa Pebbles box and it was off center enough that it was seriously confusing people. One of the girls yelled something like, “Come on guys, it’s just Cocoa Pebbles!” That got us all laughing and we finally figured it out and got all three ribbons. We decided if they made us do cheers, that was going to be ours! Next one was called Suck It. We had to suck M&M’s up in a straw and transport them into a bottle across the stage without using hands. I tried and got about half way across before I could no longer breath, so I bowed out gracefully and then took pictures. We didn’t do so well on the first round, but rounds two and three we had it in the bag… or the bottle. Two ribbons for that one. Next we moved on to one where we had a tennis ball tied to a rope tied to our waists behind us and we had to spin to get the momentum on the rope to force the ball to swing and then knock 3 cups off the table. It was dizzying, but a lot of fun. We got all three ribbons and some awesome feelings of vertigo. The next one was called Shoe Fly. You can only imagine. You had to fling your shoe, using nothing but your foot and land it on a table about five feet away. I chose to be the shoe catcher and throw back the ones that didn’t make it. Did you know that most sneakers bounce?? We had some real shoe flinging effort but the most we ever got on the table was 10 and we needed 12. No ribbons. The last activity was called Movin’ Up. We had a stack of blue cups with one red cup at the bottom. We had to pass the cups around the circle with each person moving one cup at a time to the bottom of the stack until the red one made it back on bottom. We didn’t quite have the right rhythm on the first round, but the next two rounds we got it down and came out with two ribbons. After all the teams were done, the stake leaders counted up the ribbons. We came in second place, behind a tie for first place, but we only lost by one ribbon. The sad part was one of the teams that came in first contained the Aaronic Priesthood side of our ward and the Bishop took up bragging rights. It was a really fun activity to teach the youth the importance of team work and to let us enjoy a little healthy competition. We wrapped up with a lot of thanks to the Stake leaders for pulling it off, cleaned up the area, ate lunch, and came home. Being that it’s free fry day at Arctic Circle, that was our final stop where we gorged on ice cream cones and fries before bringing the girls home. It was a great weekend and I was very blessed to be able to go.