According to my husband, Dan, our first Family Night was a Survivor Night. If you aren't familiar with the television show, 16-18 people are left stranded- generally on an island. They are split up on two teams and then compete in challenges against one another. Towards the end of each episode, the two teams compete in an immunity challenge. The winning team gets to go back to their camp; the losers go to tribal counsel. At tribal counsel, each person would write down a name of someone on their tribe to vote off and send home. This is just a rough description. You can check out more about the show here.
Dan divided us into two teams: boys against the girls (he was the host). The first thing we had to do was come up with a tribe name. You could also make a tribal flag with your name on it, as well. Then we had to do an immunity challenge. Our challenge was to eat a variety of mostly tropical fruits. I know that doesn't sound too bad, but he bought some unique types of fruit (kiwi, star fruit, mango, papaya), as well as bananas, strawberries, and coconut milk (from a coconut, not a can). We had three rounds. For each round, Dan would bring out a different plate. For example, round 1: bananas, strawberries, kiwi. My daughter, Emma would pick a fruit and eat all of that fruit, and then my son, Zachary. Then I ate one of the fruits left and then my son, Alec. If you couldn't eat all of your fruit, you lost. I almost didn't make it to the next round because I have trouble eating bananas. Something about the texture! Everyone completed what was on the plate and we went onto round 2: star fruit, mango, papaya. We followed the same procedure. We then made it to round 3: coconut milk. I don't know if you have ever tried the milk straight from the coconut, but it isn't very pleasant in my opinion. In fact, Emma and I couldn't drink all of it, but Alec did. So the boys won and my family voted me out!! We only did one challenge, but you could have other challenges like: who can stand on one foot the longest or who can knock down a series of targets. You can really make most anything into a challenge, just try to be creative and have fun.
On the show Survivor, the participants usually don't eat a wide variety of food. For dinner we just ate chicken and rice. It would not be Survivor without rice! While you eat, you could watch the show. After dinner, we played a Survivor game that Dan found on DVD. You can sometimes find good deals on games if you keep your eyes open. We have built Family Nights on different games we have bought. I will write more about that at a later post. Let me know if you can come up with your own challenges.
