Ella's Corin Challenge Birthday Party

Inspired by a recent trip to Corin with Grandad, Ella decided it would be fun to have her birthday party there. She whipped up an invitation and decided on the guests before managing to pin us down to commit to a date. And so Ella's Corin Challenge Birthday Party was soon upon us.

The weather was not so kind with the threat of rain looming. The morning dawned dry, with high cloud and the radar showed rain off to the south looking like it was going to miss Corin. An 11th hour decision saw us keep with the original plan of taking two cars up to Corin for a morning of challenges (to earn the bobsled tickets), bobsled rides, wood fired pizza and marshmallow toasting.


Firstly though, a cake needed decorating!!

Unfortunately in the last 10km, the heavens opened up and the bobsled rides were looking dubious and at Corin, our worst fears were confirmed when staff informed us that the bobsled would not be open as the bobsled brakes don't work in the wet! Had we known that, we probably would have done our back up plan of indoor bouldering.

Nevertheless we had 7 challenges for the kids to complete.

1. Untie the Knot - in a circle, kids take two different peoples hand and then without letting go they have to untie themselves.

2. Face the Cookie - balance an oreo on their forehead and without using their hands, get the oreo into their mouth

3. Save Sam- in pairs, save Sam the snake lolly by putting his life jacket (another lolly) on and placing him back into his boat (a cup) by only using paperclips!

4. Precious Cargo - in height order, spaced between two points, throw the cargo via each person from one end to the other without dropping it.  The cargo was a beanbag, tomato and an egg!

5. Tallest Tower - in groups, using uncooked spaghetti, sticky tape and a marshmallow build the tallest tower.

6. Balloon Balance - in pairs back to back with a balloon in between, go around a course without holding or dropping the balloon.

7. Riddles - solve the riddles.


There was lots of laughing and the kids looked like they were having fun. We timed it perfectly with the wood fired pizzas arriving just as they were answering the last of the riddles. In fact the riddles continued on over lunch with kids sharing ones that they had heard too!

A trip outside to find marshmallow sticks and visit the non running bobsled before returning to toast the biggest marshmallows ever! Then birthday cake before it was time to return home. Despite the weather this party was great and would have been awesome if the bobsled had been running!