Letterboxing

So you are probably thinking, "What? No mention of Father's Day?" Well, if my husband weren't a dork I'd have a decent picture of my children with him, and we would have an entire post. Only, he can't/won't take a decent picture. He sticks his finger up his nose...picks his son's nose (no, I missed that picture, unfortunately) and is generally pretty obnoxious come picture time. But he's an awesome dad, and it was Father's Day, so I guess I will forgive him. Happy Father's Day Hon!

So on to the topic at hand. My husband had to go out of town on business, and Davis felt a bit glum, so I decided to distract him. :) We went Letterboxing! Have you ever heard of it? Prepare to be AMAZED. My fellow Girl Scout friend/leader told me about it for camp last week, and we decided to try it out. Basically, some amazing person goes and hides a little box in a secret spot. Then leaves clues at http://www.letterboxing.org/ and you go on a treasure hunt to find it! When you get there, you have your little letterboxing journal, and use the stamp inside to mark your journal. We wrote next to the stamp whether it was easy, difficult, fun, awful, etc. So here is Haley at the first one, that we found in Hagar Park...

Haley found the first actual box. We all followed the directions and found the spot, but she found the box!

Haley is still amazed at this point that she found it. Davis is just feeling verile. Of course, he won't touch the box, because it's gross. Haley, of course, stuck her hand into a wierd hole to pull it out. Ahh, the joy of having children that are so different.

Victory! So let's do the next one, right? Oh my gosh, this one was so hard! In the first box, we found signatures that said they had to find the second box and backtrack...so I thought, hey, we found the difficult one! WRONG! lol. We looked and looked...then had to leave, change into real walking shoes (2-3 hours of walking in sandals was not my best decision) and get some water, and yes...Ice Cream! Just the booster we needed. So we headed back out...this time with a compass. We still walked around like idiots. What the heck does a Beech tree look like? Haley says it's white with black streaks. We don't find one. So we call Daddy. Daddy says the same thing. Turns out...that's a Birch Tree. So we call Papa. Ahh...good ol' Pappa...he gives us the right tree...and like 45 minutes later we find it.

At this point, Davis is VERY unhappy with how far into the woods we are. He might be smiling in this picture...but it's all for show. He gave up before we called Papa about the Beech tree. :) So he says..."Mom, can we go do the easy one?" Of course! My friend Mary Beth said that there was one in Grandville that was much more up Davis' league...so off we went.

And we are walking down the path, and here is this deer. I have never been this close to a deer, and it was so beautiful. I think this was the highlight of Haley's day. So I grab the camera and take a pic, and she bolts. We turn the corner and...

There's her friend! Even closer. Gorgeous.


Okay, on to the task at hand...

Now that we were out of the woods, Davis was happy again. So let's do the last one, right? "Mom, don't you think it's going to get dark soon?" "Davis, have some faith."...and on we went. :)

This one was the easiest one, and perfect for the last one of the evening. Davis was starting to get nervous we wouldn't get back to the car before dark. He was having fun, but he is my practical, nervous one, so he kept reminding us. We found the box, and it was full of water! So then we tried to replace the plastic bag and fix it up. Which of course, made Davis that much more nervous about time. But we got it fixed up, then went home had unhealthy snacks and went to bed. A perfect summer day. :)