The Kelowna Family YMCA is a fantastic charity that offers families in our community access to facilities to stay fit and be active. In sponsorship with Interior Savings, the YMCA Healthy Kid's Day event is taking place today at the Rutland Sports Fields. There are more than 50 'Healthy Activity Stations' with games and activities for kids of all ages to participate in, plus free food and drinks!
I went down to the event with my son Layton and his friend Jaden. Layton is super high energy and easily distracted so this type of event is perfect because there's a lot of space for him to run hard, play and quickly move on to the next activity. Even at ten and eleven years old, both boys still find the bouncy castle style activities a lot of fun. However, I think their favourite is the "zorb" activity sponsored by Bouncing Soccer Kelowna. There was a soccer ball but none of the kids had any interest in that, it appeared to be all about the smashing into one another and trying to flip over.
I got in on the action about mid-way through our time down there. I was filming a giant tug-of-war so I could show it to you; however, I had to put the camera down and rush to the rope when the team in front of me started loosing ground. Who ever thought pulling on a giant rope was so much fun? With my feet planted I pulled as hard as I could. Every time we started gaining ground I thought wow am I ever strong! Though I'm sure it was just the other five grown men that joined in too. We were steadily moving towards a win when all of a sudden I here "they just added a bunch more people" amongst the grunts and screams of glee. Then, just like that, nearly our entire half was laying on the ground in a tangled mess.
The weather was great for a day forecasted tone full of cloud and rain. In the few hours that we attended, there was not more than a few drops of rain and the sun even came out for a half hour or so. The turn out was great with hundreds of Okanagan families. There were just enough people to challenge the kids' patience as they waited momentarily in the activity line ups. Two things I really like about events like this is it gives kids an oppprtunity to interact and play with a vast number of kids they don't know or don't see on a daily basis, and two, it's an afternoon for them to socialize with friends from school that they might not often see outside of the classroom.
If you know me, you'll know that I constantly question everything around me. So my question of the day is: how do hot dogs fit into a healthy living event? Don't get me wrong, I am grateful for the complimentary food and it was good to see SunRype juices and real fruit snacks instead of chips and pop. I suppose it's hard to feed a thousand kids (many who may be picky eaters) a healthy meal, and especially when having to do that efficiently. My hat goes off to the Kelowna Family Y and all the volunteers that made this day possible for us and all the other Kelowna families; thank you!
For any Kelowna families that didn't get a chance to attend, be sure to look for this annual event again next year.