Fantastico!
Calling all Super Heroes! This year the theme for Fantastico was Super Heroes. Everyone created their own super heroes with abilities and costumes! I got fabric for the capes at my favorite fabric store in California, and everyone had a blast decorating them. They all turned out super cute, but I particularly liked David’s IT man, he had little power bars. Eric loved G’s because he used all the cool superhero symbols, like Green Lantern’s power ring, Thundercats, Voltron, etc. Jennie also did a really cute boat, and Jack made awesome things for his whole family. The cutest one came about because he accidentally made the P backwards for Patricia… then tried to use it as a J but it was still backwards. So he made a mirror image of it, and became Waverider.
Choosing superhero powers was a lot of fun. I went with phasing as Shadowcat is still my favorite heroine =) Andrew tried to make an airbender. Bobby’s main ability was, appropriately enough, consuming anything! I also need to mention that Gavin’s character development was all in mental skills designed to make him win games all evening. Like probability manipulation.
The storyline was that Tahoe was under attack by evil super villains, and we heroes needed to band together to save the world! Our first nemesis was Chiller, who threatened to unleash his freeze ray on the peaceful lake. We needed to find five crystals of power, and then locate and assemble his strike map to stop his nefarious schemes. Eric took a group of heroes to the Frisbee golf course, where they found power crystals by making par on the course. After each shot they chose the best person’s disc, and each person could only use one shot per hole. They ended up using three of Jennie’s drives because she was impressively accurate. Aidan LOVED Frisbee golf. He got the last point! Meanwhile, the rest of the team went on a scavenger hunt for pieces of the strike map, a puzzle divided up into bags. After they found four bags, they had a lot of pieces so they went upstairs to assemble them. While they were working on it, they said, “I wonder if there’s a bag with just a few puzzle pieces,that is so mean, Eric would totally do that.” Ironically, there was such a bag, but it was my idea to do that, and I hid it in a really hard spot behind the pool cues on the wall. Every person working on the puzzle went to look until finally Marilyn found it! After they had puzzled for a while, they realized the puzzle was of the Abbey Road album cover. G tried to cheat by looking it up on his IPOD, but I made them go hunt for the box downstairs instead since I had hidden it too. (Behind the Mountain Dew machine) Our Super Heroes in training also had a puzzle to do! Since Henry and Aidan were assisting in the search for water crystals, Serenity did this one on her own.
After successfully defeating Chiller, the next evildoer was Master Magma, who threatened to blow up a bomb! Unfortunately, chaos had erupted in the form of many villains vacationing in Tahoe stirring up trouble! So we had to find the heroes that belonged to each of those villains, so they could take care of them while we disarmed the bomb! To do this, they had to solve a challenging mindbender puzzle! Our Super Heroes in training located each of the clues hidden in Easter Eggs, along with orbs of power (bouncy balls we’d made earlier in the week.) Then the smartest of the Super Heroes got together to solve the puzzle! At one point, Gavin asked, “You have the answer, right?” And I said “No. I mean yes….”
In order to disarm the bomb, the heroes had to do a Pool Table challenge. Every hero got two shots and we had to clear the table or the bomb would go off! Funnily enough, the girls carried the team. Jennie and I got two balls down each, which was especially funny as Jennie can’t even reach across the table without the baby protesting. Gavin and Andrew fixed the pool cue by using some sticky foam we decorated capes with. They got bonus points for that!
After stopping Master Magma, it was time to hone the hero’s skills in the Danger Room! Half the team went to the beach to run a challenging obstacle course to hone their physical skills, while the half watching the Super Heroes in training did Sudoku puzzles to hone their mental skills. The beach was awesome, with all the heroes in their capes. Random people cheered them on! Eric was the only one who wore his cape during his actual course, and it did attack him, thus proving the Incredibles cape theory, and that we may not be the smartest super heroes on the planet. =) The course was to start at a tree, run between trees weaving, run along the top of a wall, run through sand, jump the whale, and go up on the big rocks, get two feet on the rocks, run back to wall, jump five feet, touch vent, jump over the gap between the wall, and then race back to the forest! Eric thought no one would get four points, although he just barely did.
Sudoku was so much fun, people did them even if they couldn’t get more points for them. =)
The next Super Villain was Dr. Xenon, and our problem was that we had no idea what his evil scheme was! We had intercepted a coded message, and in order to get clues to the code we had to do some reconnaissance. We split into three groups, each working to find more of the puzzle. One group created a device to move a penny ten feet, to insert a listening device into his headquarters. There were two main designs proposed, and Gavin said, “if only there was a way to get holes in this board.” Then they looked on the other side of the board and discovered there were holes! So they went that way. Jack made a brilliant case for the penny, and it worked perfectly!
The next team went to the casino to challenge Dr. Xenon’s henchman, the gambler. If they were able to take twenty dollars and double it, he would be defeated and would have to give them the information they sought. Marilyn, Veronica and David doubled their money in like the first five hands of blackjack. Everyone else at the table was making big bets, but these two girls were doing the minimum, and needed coaching. They got in trouble for touching cards with two hands, and a couple other minor things. Veronica got splits, and Marilyn was just lucky!
The final team’s plan was to act as double agents, providing photographs of the heroes using their abilities to insinuate themselves within Dr. Xenon’s followers. We went on a photo scavenger hunt! Andrew had some great ideas for tricky photography!
Since we succeeded at all three tasks, solving the cryptogram was easy! Dr. Xenon was planning to put mind control solution in the city’s water supply! We had to create a way to get the antidote into the water supply. We did an egg drop! I hadn’t done this since middle school, and I think everyone had a blast with it. Four different groups made devices, and since they all survived being tossed off the balcony, we tossed them off the third floor next. They all worked! Although a few eggs were scrambled, none broke!
The final round was against Dr. ElectroMagneto! He had destroyed the world’s communications systems, and the only way we could communicate was using ancient forms of communication (Pictionary, Charades, and Catchphrase.) We had a crazy insane round of each of those three games! It was a blast, and the kids got very excited too! The rules were just to get as many right answers as possible in a ten minute time frame for each round, and you could get anyone to help. Everyone wanted Andrew’s help, which was funny because he was behind the couch and had to run around each time. He did a great “clobberin’ time!” in charades. Too funny! After the game was over, people wanted to do a bonus round of all the hardest clues that they didn’t get to. Gavin went online and looked up a lot of obscure Green Lantern references so he had the best chance of getting answers =)
At the end, as a reward for the Super Heroes bravery, we gave out Super Hero team uniforms, t-shirts designed by Patricia and Jack! The kids were so cute in their little shirts! =) We had another amazing Fantastico, and thank you so much everyone that came out to celebrate with us!
