Extreme Holiday Activities

Happy holidays! We’ve collected some ideas for the holidays that are active and unusual – maybe even bordering on extreme. We’ve grouped these activities by topic, and ranked them in terms of degree of difficulty and/or risk – green, blue, black and double black.H

Family Time

Green: Relax at Boondocks Fun Center in Northglenn, with bowling, laser tag, arcades and putt-putt!

Blue: Feel adrenaline snowmobiling with On the Trail Snowmobile Rental in Grand Lake.

Black: During any random holiday dinner, try to get your 16-year-old stepson to look you in the eye for five minutes and utter one complete sentence.

Double Black: Talk to your grandpa about immigration reform.

Skiing

Green: Try out Breckenridge’s epic new Peak 6, with 550 skiable acres!

Blue: Jet to Silverton heli skiing in southwest Colorado, the ultimate steep and deep adventure.

Black: Put your ski boots on in the car without banging your body against the window and cursing and groaning and looking like a man with a hernia trying to escape a straightjacket.

Double Black: Explain what “packed powder” could possibly mean.

Celebrating the Thanksgiving Meal

Green: Pick your own pumpkins for the Thanksgiving pie at Rock Creek Farm in Broomfield.

Blue: Grow the vegetables yourself with help from the Urban Garden in Lafayette.

Black: Play a Thanksgiving dinner game called “The Gut Buster 500.” We’ve played this game a few years at our Thanksgiving, and it couldn’t be simpler: using a bathroom scale, players are weighed before and after the meal; the man who gains the most weight wins (and it will be a man).

Enjoying the Christmas Ham

Green: Buy something succulent at Broomfield’s Honeybaked Ham Company. (525 Zang St., Broomfield, 303-442-1100.)

Blue: Fly to west-central Oklahoma and bag your own wild boar with a company called Addictive Hunting.

Black: Remain calm serving the ham. For example, if your cousin Larry asks if the hog was given growth hormones, and if you tell him you don’t know, and if Larry haughtily informs you that HE would never serve hormone-infused meat to HIS family, since hormones are making boys grow chest hair and girls grow tits when they’re 8 – the challenge here is to say nothing.

Christmas Presents

Green: Shop for presents at your favorite local store.

Blue: Give your kids a trip to the “North Pole” near Colorado Springs, where they can “meet Santa” and his elves.

Black: Christmas morning, attempt to watch children other than your own open presents without passing out from boredom, and without audibly grumbling to your sister, “Opening things — it’s never interesting, is it? No one watches anyone else open their mail. No one watches anyone else unpack their groceries. Why is one act of taking crap out of a bag supposed to be more interesting than any other act of taking crap out of a bag?”

Double Black: Tell your children that, in the spirit of Christmas, half of their new toys will be donated to the less fortunate. When they start to cry, tell them it’s not that bad: they get to pick which ones.

These are just some of our ideas for a happy, healthy, edgy holiday season! From our house to yours, in the spirit of the holidays, we wish to remind you that Yellow Scene assumes no liability.