Cache Day

My immediate family - all except for Grace - enjoys the outdoors, but generally all of us opt for indoor activities. (Grace LOVES to be outside.) We love to camp and the kids have discovered fun in biking; we geocache here and there; and sometimes Robert likes to fish. But usually we find ourselves instead inside the house, either at the computer or some video game or with our noses tucked into books.

Part of it's laziness. Part of it is that I don't like to sweat. Part of it is that we're all nerds.

At the beginning of the summer, I was a good mom, and I got the kids off their butts in the house and outside onto their bikes. I mandated some sort of physical activity daily.

For a whole week.

Or maybe 4 or 5 days.

But then Memaw arrived and we were busy for weeks with our trip.

So we've been back now since Friday night, and it's only Tuesday, and I'm really proud of my mothering skills in that I've only let three days go by of pure laziness.

Now I'm all about summertime relaxation and enjoying the freedom of it all... but really... I was snapped into reality the other night, when at 11p.m. I came and told Chris that it was time for bed.

"Bed!?!" She went on to rant about how she didn't understand why she couldn't stay up all night. After all, she said, it's summer, and she could sleep all day if she wanted to.

Uh. No. Reality check. I immediately went in to ask the Mr. if that's how it was when he was a kid, because it certainly wasn't how it was when I was one! He agreed with me, so now we're back to reality.

Anyway, they still get to stay up later than normal, and sleep a little later, too, but staying up all night and sleeping all day - no. And last night I issued a new mandate - daily physical and mental exercise before video games, playdates, computer puzzles, etc.

So this morning we got their tired little butts out of bed and went geocaching. It still took us hours to get ready. I was up at 7 but we didn't get out the door until 9:30. We sure have gotten into this take-all-the-time-in-the-world mode of getting ready this summer. And all C and J had to do was eat and throw on some shoes!

We had picked up a few geocaches on our trip (very few) and it just reminded me how much I really enjoy it. Truth be told, we need cheap (read: free) entertainment for the rest of the summer, and caching fits the bill. So I scoured the gc site last night and found a park in nearby FoCo that looked big and pretty and boasted four geocaches.

It took us two hours from the time we left the house until the time we got home, and the park was only about 10 minutes away. We found all 4 caches, and walked probably at least 2 miles. Maybe that isn't much to you, but when you have one in a stroller clamoring to get out (when she isn't squealing about a bug) and a second who you would think was dying from all the physical exertion, you know, it began to feel like 6 or 10 miles. ;) The park was sizable and beautiful - green everywhere and lots and lots and lots of wildflowers. It was awesome to be able to walk its perimeter (and then some, as some of the caches were off the beaten path) and explore it in its entirety.

This picture doesn't do the wildflowers justice.


After we found the last cache, thunder began to rumble and the clouds came in. We walked back to the play area and let the kids (mostly Grace, since she'd been stuck in the stroller the whole time) play for about 20 minutes before it began to rain. It was neat to sit and watch them play together (nicely, if you can believe it) and see lightning way off in the distance. When the first water dropped, we headed out, since sometimes, we've found, these thunderstorms come on quickly and we didn't want to wet Grace's cast.



Even the play area was great to explore. It was big and spread out, and had lots of things I've never seen before - a big plunger-looking thing to sit and spin on, other things to spin and balance and rock on, a sand maze thing, and a splash garden (which was closed today). I'm looking forward to coming back again maybe after church sometime for a picnic.

We were all tired by the time we headed home, but it sure felt good to get out and do something. Even the kids said they had fun, more than once. And I guess that's what it's all about.

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I can't believe it's July already. Seems like the holidays were'nt all that long ago and now 2008 is halfway over. Time to get back to my APAD Scrap Challenge as well. Scrapdiggity!