Rubber Ducky Resort & Campground – A family campground located in Warren, near Winnipeg, Manitoba

Even though Mother Nature was not very kind to us we still made the best of our annual Halloween in August. As most of you know it started raining Friday morning and didn’t really stop until Sunday afternoon. Despite that we were still able to do all of our Halloween activities.  By some miracle the rain stopped for a brief time on Saturday morning for the bobbing for apples. This doesn’t affect the kids of course since they are already in the pool but it made it much better for this apple tosser. Considering it was cool and kind of icky I wondered how many kids would actually come out but as usual we had a full pool. Our version of bobbing for apples is similar to the traditional in that they have to grab the apple in their teeth without using their hands. We put a ducky twist on it by having the kids in the pool and tossing them the apples. The kids have a blast as you will see from the pictures still to come. Next up in the afternoon was the games. Things started off a little slow with not many kids then all of a sudden we had a whole bunch come in and the games lasted over an hour. Once again we did the tried and true mummy wrap with toilet paper and the always iccky find the eyeballs in the brains. (translation grapes in oatmeal) This year we actually had some fake eyeballs so it added a bit of a twist. Most kids love to get down and dirty and dig in the slimy pail of goo.  The rain didn’t cooperate for our trick or treating and it was a cold, wet walk around the campsites – much like Halloween in October can be. Despite that we still had around 70 kids and one duck out and about. All in all everyone made the best of the bad weather and still had a good time.

Check out the pictures here http://picasaweb.google.com/RubberDuckyResort/HalloweenInAugust2010?feat=directlink

How many times have you heard that line today?  The weather has certainly been the hot topic lately. (yes pun intended) When it gets this hot it really is hard not to complain, but I try not to because before long we will have a foot of snow on the ground. 😦

We had a great turnout for our first ever Mini Olympics.

Mini Olympics Winners

Mini Olympics Winners

Mini Olympics Winners

Mini Olympics Winners

Mini Olympics Winners

Everyone that participated  was awarded a gold medal and the top winners in the age categories got to stand  on top the podium in front of everyone.

Next up was Fear Factor. The entries started out pretty slow, but in the end we had 16 teams participating. The first round we kept nice and calm with a ducky toss. The second round was time for the eating challenge. Like on the show each team had to choose one person to eat whatever we threw at them. We didn’t get too disgusting and everything was an actual food item. It wasn’t really stuff that you would eat everyday however – pork liver, beef tapa, snails, duck eggs and some sort of gelatiny coconutty thing that I really don’t remember the name of.

Apparently Luc doesn't like liver

Sorry ladies this was too funny to not post

Kinda looks like he is enjoyin a normal lunch

Next round was the timed relay. One partner was locked in the jail while the other partner searched through our fish tank to find the key.  Once they had a key they had to ride a kids tricycle, go down the kids slide and head to the jail to try the key in the lock. If they got the wrong key they had to go back and start all over again, if they got the right one then their partner had to ride the trike and race back to the fish tank.

Searching for the key

Riding the Trike

Down the slide

Is it the right key?

The Winners

We learned a few things from our first year of Olympics and Fear Factor. Most important is that next year we will separate them and do Mini Olympics on one weekend and Fear Factor on a different weekend. Then we will add an adult category to the Olympics and a kid category to the Fear Factor. I have to thank all the volunteers that helped out with the activities. It took a lot of extra hands to make this happen and we had lots of volunteers step up.

This past weekend was our first Christmas in July at the Duck and it went over all right. It really is hard to get into Christmas when it is pushing 30C outside. We did have a few people that found  the spirit and decorated their campsites. I even saw a grinch hanging around at one site. We even managed to find a volunteer that was willing to put on a Santa suit in this heat. Thanks so much to Robin for being our Santa. We set him up in the shade of the picnic shelter and had probably around 2o kids come to visit. 

It has been nice to finally be getting a hot, sunny summer. After the monsoon rains earlier this year it was looking a little shaky. Things have definately turned around and our weekends have been filling up like crazy. Here’s hoping that it lasts well into the fall.

We have been getting a bit of a tech upgrade. One of our seasonals has been kind enough to install some speakers and new wiring so that things are a lot simpler for us. It now only takes a couple minutes for us to put on a movie, sports or anything on the big screen with the projector. We are playing all the televised Bombers games on the big screen now. We have some new speakers set up outside so that the tunes are always playing. I am even slowly learning which buttons to push and which dials to turn. A big thanks to Wayne for helping out.

The long weekend is fast approaching and the forecast still looks good. As of right now our sites are all booked up. Most long weekends I end up with cancellations and rebooking so we will see what the next couple days bring. As always Aug long is when we have our mini golf tourney and this year we are also doing Karaoke. The weekend after the long weekend is our Fear Factor and Mini Olympics weekend. Things are slowly coming together for that. We have the fear factor part pretty much worked out. I have  few ideas for the mini olympics, but think we still need to add some more stuff. I will have to put my thinking cap on and see what I can come up with.  If anyone has any ideas please feel free to send them my way.

Things did not look well for DuckyFest Saturday morning when mother nature decided to send some rain our way. Thankfully she turned off the tap around 1pm and we were able to have a great fundraiser. By far the most popular place was the Ducky Jail. There were quite a few convicts spending their time inside the big house. Our sheriffs took their job seriously and if you saw them coming your way you knew you were in trouble.  We had about 6 or so tables of silent auction prizes that were donated including the grand prizes of flat screen tv, gazebo, Black Eyed Peas tickets, air hockey table, and money tree. A huge thank you to everyone that donated as well as to all the volunteers that helped out. I can’t say enough about the volunteers that helped out this year. We had lots of people step up to help out and make the day run smoothly.  There are too many pictures to post into the blog so follow the link to this album here http://picasaweb.google.com/RubberDuckyResort/DuckyFest2010ChildrenSWishFundraiser?feat=directlink  The Karoake guys from Matchmaker music generously donated their time and equipment once again during the afternoon. We had some good and some not so good singers come out. They even brought Elvis along for the ride. They will be returning on the Sunday of the August long weekend.

It seems like every year somebody has to get their head shaved  or mullet cut off and this year was no exception. Kyle and Bernard were the victims (oops I mean volunteers) this year. They managed to raise $588 for the cause.

And now what everyone has been waiting for…. the grand total is …. $3017 raised. Almost $1000 more than last year.

Things are coming along nicely for DuckyFest this weekend. This is our 5th annual fundraiser – amazing how fast the time flies. We have pretty much a full campground for the weekend and are expecting a few day visitors so hopefully we will have a big total for our donation.  The donations are still coming in for the silent auction, the volunteers are still signing up and everything is looking good for a great weekend. Looks like even the weather will cooperate. We have certainly enjoyed all the sunshine this past weekend. There were a few of our seasonals on holidays this past week and they put their talent to good work by building the jail for DuckyFest.

We gotta give everybody that helped out a huge pat on the back because it turned out amazing. Special thanks to Doug and R N R Steel for the doors and windows. They were a great finishing touch. On Saturday night it was given a test run with a gangsta wannabe, an uglykid and a birthday girl being thrown in jail. I have a feeling it will make a lot of money on Saturday and will create a lot of laughs. The plan is that it costs a $2 donation to arrest someone and $1 to get bailed out. There are some people that better make sure they always have a loonie in their pocket.

We added a couple new things to the schedule for Saturday. Cory from Sinclair Fashions is going to be setting up a display and he is going to donate 10% of all the sales to the CWF. Mcrae Motorsports will be bringing our their race cars and super truck and will have them set up on display for everyone to check out.

It is really funny to see that the ducks actually have their own little personalities (or duckonalities) and how smart they really are. They are pretty much all the same in that they know to come strolling over to the rec building or our house when they are looking for a treat. They are quite tame and will come close most of the time. If there gets to be too many people around that they don’t know they do run for cover however. Most of them will take the bread right out of my hand. Some are gentle and don’t even touch me, but others do bite the hand that feeds them. Luckily they have no teeth so it doesn’t hurt. One of the males like to play catch believe it or not. He will wait for me to throw the bread and is quite good at catching it midair. If by chance he drops the piece he will actually leave that one on the ground and wait for me to throw the next one. If you watch in this video you can see him catching it.  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UgtX9Qjv6Vs

It is hard to believe that we have now been multiple days without any rain and I heard a rumour of 27C for Wednesday. (fingers crossed now) No complaining and whining now that’s for sure.

We had a full house for our rock painting craft on Saturday morning. There were some very talented kids creating masterpieces.

Mrs. Potato Head?

The finished products

A big thanks to Julie and Collette for helping out. The kids always have such a good time painting their rocks that we have already decided that we need to do it again another weekend.