Corn Hole Tournament!

There are couple things in Columbus that I have never seen before. Glow bugs, Asian markets at ever corner, humidity, and corn hole. Corn hole is a really popular game that at first sight, seems kind of like a game you'd play in nursery or in the little kid section of a carnival. But here, it is really competitive. People play it at the beach, picnics, tail gate parties, and I think some people play it as a drinking game.

A couple in our ward organized a big tournament with root beer floats.

Everyone wore matching outfits with their spouses and matching leis. Benjamin and I wore our matching BYU-I gym shirts. We were the Vikings (and we came in last place).

The golden corn bag was the prize for the winner. We had a tournament bracket and we all played for  quite awhile. But right before the two remaining couples played the final round, it started pouring. So the golden corn bag is still up for grabs.

The rules of the game: Each team is composed of two players. One person from each of the two teams stands on each side. Two corn hole boards face each other. Each side takes turns throwing bags filled with dried corn at the board across from them, alternating between the two players until the bags are gone. So if you look at the picture above, Benj would throw one, then the guy in the yellow would throw and so one until each has thrown four bags.

Each bag that sticks on the board is worth 1 point. Each bag that goes in the hole is worth 3 points. However, the two teams’ bags cancel each other out. So in the picture above , the blue bag cancels out one of the red bags. So the red team got 1 point. Who ever reaches 21 points first wins. If you go over 21 points, you automatically go back down to 13.

Go Cougs!

I love this action shot of my friend Jen tossing the corn bag.

Although we lost every match, we had a blast hanging out with our friends. I am sure that we will have plenty of opportunities to improve our skills.

Glow Bugs!

One of the highlights of moving to Ohio was seeing my first fire-fly. There are no lightning bugs in Idaho. Out of sight, out of mind. I had never seen one and I never really expected or thought about seeing one, so when one started flashing in front of me a couple days after we moved here, I was super excited. I screamed really loud and started laughing. I followed the little bug around the park until I lost it.

Since then, we see a tons of little flashing bugs at dusk almost every night. It is so cool to see little flashing lights everywhere.

I caught a glow bug, but it wouldn’t glow in the jar. I felt bad keeping it in there so I let it go. You can see it crawling on the edge of the jar. Also, that little blurry yellow light is another glow bug.

Comm. Fest. and North Market

Benj and I decided to ride the bus downtown to see what all the Community Festivsl hype was all about. It was basically a big hippie festival in a park. It had lots of booths with all sorts of trinkets and fair food. There were lots of live bands and lots of hippies and weirdoes. We didn’t last long, but it was interesting to walk around for a little while and observe all different kinds of interesting people.

There were lots of people hula hooping in the middle of a crowd. This girl was pretty good. She had two going at once for a really long time and kept switching them around from neck to waist to hands to legs.

Ok, so maybe I shouldn’t post this, but it was the funniest thing I have ever seen. There was a band playing and they were pretty good. Then all of a sudden this guy comes out of the crowd and stands right in front of the band and starts dancing like no one was watching. It was awesome.

Oh, how I wish that I had been able to record this!

There were lots of other strange people at comm fest and a little too much beer for our liking, so we moved along to the North Market. This is a really neat indoor market downtown. I loved it! there were so many neat things. We got some delicious ice cream. There were really interesting flavors we tried rhubarb lime cardamom, brambleberry crisp, salty caramel, and blueberry lemon.  There were also stands that sold dessert crepes and waffles,  candy vendors, lots of produce, salsa vendors, and lots of really yummy food stands.

This is looking down on the market from the second floor.