CHIP Chesapeake's Amazing Race 2011!

I had the priviledge of running the Children's Health Investment Program (CHIP)'s 2nd Annual Chesapeake's Amazing Race with some amazing women on Saturday, May 21, 2011.  We had a blast.  We are The First Wives Club and we consist of myself, Charlene Till, Carol Rood and Karol Sabastian.  We all ran the race last year as A.R.M. (Amazin Racin Mom's), and came in about 9th out of about 24 teams.  We decided to change our name this year to help boost our chances of winning :). 

We started the day at Chesapeake Town Center at 9am with registration.  They then had all team leaders (me) stand in a hoola hoop and each team member went to stations.  The stations consisted of diapers, bibs and bonnet/binkies.  We had to stand with our hands behind our backs and couldn't help our team mates put the items on us, so we stood there while they put the items on us, then we had to race to grab a baby bottle bank and run around the fountain and grad a marked bag and begin the Amazing Race.  Our first official stop was Greenbrier Florist, so that's where we headed.  If you are friend of mine on Facebook, I've posted the video of the whole baby-dressing and you can laugh just like we did during the whole thing.  We were actually the first team done with our baby-dressing and the first team to our mandatory first stop. 

I won't go step by step of how our day went, but a few of the things we did were: carried a strangers groceries, sang "The Loving Feeling" to a store clerk, bought a teacher an apple, hugged a service member, did a conga line through a grocery store, wore orange jump suits in front of the Sherrif's office, stopped-dropped-and-rolled in front of a fire department, took a picture with a mascot, searched for golden ducks, delivered flowers, visited a park and had fun on swings, searched for several misc items such as houses with christmas lights, cars waiting for trains, house numbers, red-headed children, elderly people, etc.  Let's just say it was a BLAST and we will certainly be back next year!  The race finished at 3pm at Abuelo's in Greenbrier.  Along the way,  you had to collect $ for CHIP and ask strangers for money.  This was very hard for us to do, but we persevered and got the job done.  Heck, Carol carried a stranger's groceries for him and he gave her a $20 tip..woohoo! (maybe we should just do that all day next year :)

If you've skipped to the collage below, then you know how the day ended.  The exit process was very long and drawn out, but worth it.  Our team actually came in FIRST!  We were complete shocked-speechless- beyond words - if you know any member of our group - that's very hard to do!

 

The trophy presentation took place at a Chesapeake City Council Meeting, last night, 6/14.  You can watch the video here.  If you look below the video and in the drop-down menu, click on presentations and then go to time:  1:56:10, you will see Trish (head of CHIP of Chesapeake) starting the presentation of the 1st, 2nd and 3rd place winners.  3rd Place were the Health Nuts and 2nd Place were the Politicos.  Sadly, Carol and Karol could not be at the trophy presentation because their children came first and had other obligations. I know, what are ya gonna do?  We didn't get to choose the night, blame the Mayor for that one!

Unfortunately we only have 1 trophy for all 4 of us to share.  But we will share it indeed.  I took it first, so I'll have it for the first quarter (3 months) and since the rest of them live in the same neighborhood in Suffolk, they can duke it out who will get it next and then next and then next :)!  We'll rotate and then all we need to do now is win 3 more times in the next 3 years and we will all have a trophy and won't have to share them!  Yeah, that's the ticket!

Amazing Race 2011 raised over $13,000 for the children of Chesapeake -what a WONDEFUL cause!