Halloween Party

Last weekend we participated in the Eckersley's annual Haunted Halloween Challenge.  We were part of the orange team and we had such a great time!  (Think of the challenge like Amazing Race except with a Halloween theme.)  There were four teams and we each had to decipher clues to find small tiles with phrases written on them.  The goal was to be the first team to gather all the phrases and return to "home base" before the end of the night.  Not only did we have to decipher the clues, but we also had designated pit stops for specific team tasks that were assigned at certain times throughout the night.

Our first task included bricks in a creek, tied to string, tied to a balloon.  Each brick was marked with a different team color.  We had to find three bricks with our team color on it and return it to the hosts to receive our first set of clues.  Some of the bricks were in the middle of the creek.  One of our team members, Jake, decided to take one for the team and go in.  He removed his shoes and rolled up his pants, but no one realized how deep the creek actually was - especially him.  He was rather surprised to be chest deep in water.  Thankfully, the first brick he found was one of ours!  (Unfortunately that jump in the creek gave him some unexpected damage to his foot and he ended up leaving the game early.)

Some of the clues were harder than others to figure out.  One item given to us was a plastic skeleton.  There were about 5 different parts of the clue hidden throughout the inside of the skeleton.  Another clue was found inside a sealed bag of caramels, inside the caramel.  We have no idea how on earth they got the clues inside the caramel and then made the caramel look exactly cubed shaped.  (Last year we had to find a clue inside a sealed bag of peanut M&Ms.  In some of them, the peanuts had been removed and the clue was put in its place.)

We drove all around Alpine and Lehi to find the "phrases."  We even had to go through a haunted house as part of a team challenge.  (My first time in one in years and hopefully my last one!)

Although we made a good show of it, we didn't win.  We were awarded third place, but then later that night as we were cleaning up the toilet paper in our yard (another task), our neighbors, who were the TPers, came over to help us.  They admitted to us that they had actually cheated off of us while we were out of our car.  They had peaked in and taken a couple of our answers.  So we are now claiming second place.  We can't wait for next year's party!