We found it!

Last summer I introduced the kids to an activity I had heard about from somewhere - Letterboxing. The basic concept is to find things that other people have hidden somewhere. I know it sounds silly, but it's actually a blast. Last year we only went looking for four letterboxes. We found three of them, and more about the fourth later. It's so embarassing!

We took a break over the fall and winter mainly because of moving, getting settled in school, work, busy weekends, and all the normal life stuff. Oh yeah, and tromping around on nature trails in the winter gets a little breezy. We did go look for a letterbox at a local park when it was snowing one day. After I took off my blonde hair, I realized that it's difficult to look for a letterbox when the ground is covered with THREE INCHES of SNOW! Duh.

Yesterday I took the kids back home to play with their cousins and since the weather was awesome I talked them into going letterbox hunting. We made the trek to the park, Kevin even came along. I think he was really curious to see what the heck I was talking about. We hit the trail, followed the clues, and then tromped around and around for several mintues looking for the first box. Caleb had his thinking cap on - he found it!



We retraced our steps and took off down another path to find the next stash. This one was just as much fun, although Conner was getting upset because she wasn't finding the boxes first. Caleb found this one too. The final clue for it was hard to figure out because the thing we were supposed to look for was partially concealed by a fallen cedar tree. I would have never found it.



Here's Conner's reaction:



Then we had just enough time to go look for the last box in the series. Caleb and Conner and I had looked for this one before and not found it. Which was entirely my fault. Mr. Science Teacher Kevin was along though and helped figure out the last clue which had stumped me before. Hayden was the fastest and found this one. Note to self - 150 degrees means in line with your body, not the line made when you hold out your arms. Another fine moment of brillance.



After this one, we had to hit the road (rather quickly) because we were already late. Took the kids for an Easter Egg hunt at my parents (yes, we still do that) then had to take them to their dad's for the weekend. Caleb and I had a fun conversation while we were waiting for his dad. The poor kid doesn't believe in the Easter Bunny, the Tooth Fairy, or Santa anymore. He thinks I do all that stuff - but construction workers take a holiday over Christmas so they can pretend to be elves to make all the toys. And he said that with a straight face.

Kids rock.