Today I Told DB

Today I finally talked to DB and I think I can finally lay the issue to rest. Each one of the friends that you brought into my life, the ones I feared I had lost in losing you, know my truth. It is enough. I did not ask any of them to pick between us. I know the heart is large enough to love us both. Yet to be honest, to be real in my relationships with them, I couldn't pretend that this great gaping hole wasn't blown out of my life history. Whatever happens to those relationships from here forward is no longer about you. It is about me. It is about my relationship with that person outside the context of you.

So much of my adult life was in the context of you. Too much of it. I didn't see that until you were gone and I finally saw how enmeshed we had been. Learning to live in this new reality hasn't been a smooth process and it has taken me nearly two years to finally gather the courage and make the decision to speak my truth to DB. He apologized to me on your behalf. How sad is that? He filled in a few gaps for me. There is a girl. I hope and pray she is the one and that the two of you are beautifully happy together. I hope you have the courage to be honest with her about where you have fallen and the places you are weak so that she can help you up and help you to be strong. I wish you joy. Despite everything. I wish you joy.

Life Interrupted

I started back writing in this blog a bit last March with the intent of making doing so a regular thing but life got rather dramatically interrupted shortly after that post and remains so to this day. We are among the many victims of the May floods of 2010 that hit much of Tennessee. I am sitting on the landing between the living room and the dining room, both remain emptied of furniture and stripped to the bare concrete/asbestos tile floors. The living room is virtually empty. A vacuum cleaner, a broom, a fan and a work light are the only items there. The dining room is less organized. A blanket covered in kitchen items to be kept and another covered in kitchen items to be donated, a drying rack where several pieces of delicate laundry are drying, a step stool that acts as the desk for my notebook computer, a tv tray where I cook much of our food, a large trash can and the various blinking electronic devices that connect me still to the internet world. It is like living in a really poorly equipped college dormitory. At least we are back home. It was three weeks before I could be inside the house at all due to the dampness and the mold. It was another three weeks before the last of the soggy, damaged parquet hardwood gave up its hold on the concrete sub-floors and was finally removed from the house. Four weeks of air-conditioner problems in one of the hottest Memphis summers in decades kept us out at the last. After that was resolved there was nothing that would keep us from moving back home.

I understand now the doggedness of the survivors of Katrina. The seemingly irrational drive to save what to someone on the outside looking in would seem much wiser to simply walk away from. This is HOME. This is the house where our daughter was conceived and to which we brought her home from the hospital. It is the only home she has ever known. This is the house where a dozen church kids looked beyond the mess and disorder and saw welcome anyway. This is the house that we invested our own blood, sweat and tears in when we moved in, still newlyweds, 16 and a half years ago. This is the home we never intended to make our forever home but that somehow became that while we were busy building our lives. So even though the loans we are taking to put it back together will result in us being hopelessly upside down, walking away and letting the bank take her isn't an option. It just isn't.

Life has been interrupted for sure but we will find our way somehow back home.

Artisan Bread in Five Minutes a Day

Top is what the dough looks like when you take it from the fridge and have cut one loaf's worth off to bake. The second photo is what the one loaf looks like as it is resting before baking. Note the cornmeal on the cutting board to keep the dough from sticking. This will become important later. Photo three is what the loaf looks like after having cooked, upside down because it flipped instead of sliding off the board, just before being removed from the oven. Photo four is the finished product, cornmeal topped crust and self created steam vent are due to said flip from photo three. The oven may be just a little bit on the hot side but the finished product tastes amazingly good all things considered

It's Been Almost A Year

since I posted here last. I had thought about simply letting this blog fade away since I am committed to blogging daily over at my med blog but I think there is still a purpose for a place for me to blog things that really don't fit over there and so here I am again.

I don't know how often I'll write or what even this blog is going to be about. The good news is that fits the subtitle. The random musings of a homeschool mom and geocacher...and artist...and churchmom and woman of many other roles.

I am still learning daily who I am. This last year has been one where everything except the foundations has been shaken. Yet I am still standing. God is still in control. Life is still good.

I am finding new interests and reviving old ones. Meeting new pieces of myself and reclaiming ones that had been trusted to people who were not worthy of that trust. I am bruised and cautious but starting now I am beginning to move toward hope and healing.

It is well with my soul.

This needs to be my prayer...Often.

“My failure to be true even to my own accepted standards:

My self-deception in face of temptation:

My choosing of the worse when I know the better: O Lord, forgive.

My failure to apply to myself the standard of conduct I demand of others:

My complacence towards wrongs that do not touch my own case and my over-sensitiveness to those that do:

My slowness to see the good in my fellows and the see the evil in myself:

My hardness of heart towards my neighbours faults and my readiness to make allowance for my own… O Lord, forgive.” A Diary of Private Prayer by John Baillie

 

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Missing Christmas and Other Ponderings

This year we didn’t celebrate Advent in the way we have typically done in the past and I think that contributed heavily to feeling as though somehow we “missed” Christmas. Advent began and ended with the deaths of two of my mentors and I think that contributed to the melancholy that settled on me and overshadowed much of the holiday season. I didn’t begin to feel like it was truly Christmas until after the day itself had passed. What turned the season around for me was the time spent with friends in this period between Christmas and Epiphany known as “The Twelve Days of Christmas”. I will be much more intentional about celebrating this part of the season in years to come. I will also be much more intentional about not skipping over Advent. I need that time to focus and get my mind out of the fog of responsibilities and obligations that come with preparing for the Christmas season.

 

Things that stick out in my mind as sweet moments from this time:

 

Clinging Matthew’s hand and singing together for the first time in at least twenty years as we celebrated the life of a woman who had been a mentor to us both

 

A group of 5 or 6 of us, huddled together in our grief, as they took her from the building for the last time…friends still, supporting each other as she taught us

 

Watching Taylor and the pure joy he sees the world with

 

Watching Ben and Taylor interact and seeing brotherly love

 

Doing a puzzle with my crazy family and laughing until it hurt

 

Seeing Cherri and Lil Dave even though they were at work so it had to be all too brief

 

Meeting for the 7^th year in a row with another group of friends from my high school days and enjoying the annual bonding

 

Seeing John for the first time in decades and being able to throw my arms around his neck and give him the hug that I wanted to when he returned safely from Gulf War I

 

Watching Dave with his children and getting to see a side of him that we rarely ever see

 

Holding Rory

 

Brunch with Stephanie and Brian, Mama Katherine and the kids

 

Meeting Debba’s new beau and seeing the difference in how he treats her and how she interacts with him and knowing that it is likely that this is “the one”

 

Finally choosing to make a phone call and ask a question I should have asked months ago the answer makes me feel foolish for waiting so long and sorry I missed seeing Mack based on misinformation

 

Visiting Mrs. A with Amy and Samantha and Jessica and knowing that for a few hours we eased the pain of missing Murray for all of us.

 

Spending the evening at Incredible Pizza with the tech kids laughter is such a healing gift.

 

New Years Afternoon at the Range with Aubree, Jason, Harold and David

 

New Years Eve watching old episodes of Buck Rogers with Jason, David, Jess and Harold

 

The last several days since New Years I have spent being very introspective and working on changes I’d like to make in my life to create space for more moments like these. For too long I’ve hidden behind my chaotic house and my even more chaotic schedule and avoided spending time with the people I care about. No more. I don’t want to look back and see missed opportunities to be with those I love. I may have “missed Christmas” but somehow I “got the message” anyway.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Politics Makes Strange Bedfellows


I am not, in general, a fan of Focus on the Family. I don't believe that spanking is "Godly" discipline and I don't agree with most of what Dobson has to say on most things. So imagine my chagrin to find myself on the same side of a political issue as Dobson. I'm talking about the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child and the insidious danger it poses to the rights of parents in this country and around the world.

It has, for much of human history, been understood that parents are the right and proper authority when it comes to making decisions for their children. It has been understood that the family is the basic unit of society and that government must err on the side of least disruption of the family unit. Along comes the UNCRC which threatens to turn that entire assumption on its head.

Simply put, if we as a nation don't codify current Supreme Court doctrine protecting parental rights into the explicit text of the Constitution we face a situation where this treaty, if ratified, becomes the supreme law of the land. On the face of it the treaty looks benign but as you look at recent rulings in the countries which have already ratified it as well as recent rulings in this country that are based on its principles and a very concerning picture emerges.

I invite you to go to http://parentalrights.org and educate yourself on the issue. If you feel led after you've heard what they have to say on the matter then please sign the petition and lets get the ball rolling to protect the rights of parents as they have traditionally been understood in this country and the world. Our elected officials need to know that "we the people" don't intend to have our rights superseded by this treaty. Lets send the message.

First Two Weeks

We have now completed our first two weeks of school. Yes, week two was sewing camp...BUT I can't imagine anything that she would have learned more from in a 5 day period. She made: 1-purse, 2-tissue holders, 1-skirt and an entire dress...WITH applique! This week she has three more days of sewing camp and she's making a pillow case and a pair of pajama pants. She is pleased enough with her dress that she plans to wear it to church tomorrow. I haven't seen the skirt on her yet but its cute on the hanger. The purse and tissue holders are adorable.

As far as "real school work" she has started working on both History and copywork exercises and a corresponding piece of literature. We will be adding Math, Science and Spelling at the beginning of week 4. Her copywork consists of copying her history narration once she has dictated it to me. She isn't aware of it yet but I already see her handwriting improving. Practice. Just gotta keep up with the practice.

Her fine motor skills have had a marked improvement. This year she can cut straight lines. Last year not so much. We have had an ongoing issue with this since she was in preschool and I'm glad to see she's finally maturing out of it.

As for me I'm working on creating a healthier lifestyle for us as a family. This week's action items include menu planning, finding a place for us to exercise regularly and getting an appointment with my counselor for a "tune-up" to deal with some issues that have surfaced in my own personal growth and recovery. I have high hopes that if I continue to be proactive about this situation I will see results that will make both me and my doctor happy.

I'm going to Jackson...

*hums a Johnny Cash tune in her head*

Ok...enough with the musical interlude...but I am going to Jackson TN tomorrow with two of my homeschool mom friends to their conference and curriculum fair. I'm excited. Road trip with friends, sans kids, to shop homeschool stuff. What's not to love about that?

I have almost all the pieces in place for DD's homeschool year that starts on Monday. I still need to buy "Spelling Power" and I'm hoping that the Jackson fair will have it. I didn't really get to shop our fair because I was working. I am the Administrative Assistant for MHEA and I was on the clock all weekend running our informational booth at our fair.

This will be a new adventure for us. With DD going into middle school this year we've mutually decided that she needs a bit more structure. Some folks would say that no longer makes me an unschooler. I disagree. If the decision for more structure is mutual I think it absolutely fits in with the idea of child led learning. Her desire for this more structured environment comes in part from her hopes of being a CSI when she grows up. Forensic science fascinates her at the moment and she knows that she is weak in some areas like math that she needs to focus on more intentionally for awhile. I'm excited but apprehensive. I'm not sure that my dominant random learning style will be able to sustain the structure. We shall have to see.

*breaks into song again* I'm going to Jackson, turn alooose of my coat, I'm going to Jackson, good-bye that's all she wrote....

One week until the 2008/2009 School Year Begins

I have selected July 14th as our starting date this year. We've been in the office for a bit over 6 weeks by then and the transition to that new routine is fairly solid so its time to make it into what it will be for the remainder of the "school year". I'm also tentatively working on a co-op plan for History/Science with some friends of similarly aged children that I hope goes well. I'm calling it Friday Funschool and I'm very excited about the potential.

I've got Story of the World by Bauer and Ancient Science by Jim Wiese that will be the spine around which we build the rest of our year. Math-U-See is also in the blend as is English from the Roots up. For Bible we'll study the stories that fit chronologically into the ancient history timeline. Speaking of timelines. I bought the complete timeline figures CD from homeschool in the woods along with the amazingly beautiful timeline book from Mystery of History and we'll be doing a ton of stuff with those resorces. Jess is pretty excited about having art as a formal part of school. I bought her a set of 36 colored pencils and 36 watercolor paints that are specifically restricted to her school stuff. No playing around with these and losing them. She has plenty of others to do that kind of thing with.

This probably sounds odd coming from an unschooler but I'm a complete curriculum addict. The difference is the way we approach the curriculum. They are resources. Starting points. Nothing more. No "complete the book" mentality here. We are very excited about the ancients because this is a favorite time period for Jess and there are unfinished projects (a trojan horse model for one) that are begging to be finished that we get to "count for school". LOL! I'm planning a visit to the Egyptology Institute at the local university as well as a weekend field trip to the Parthenon in Nashville in conjunction with this year's studies. A life mask project and the making of a chicken mummy just sound WAY cool to my little budding forensic scientist.

It should be an excellent year.

I can't decide...year end field trip or next year kick off trip?

Saturday we leave for Washington DC. I am absurdly excited. I get to be the tour guide as none of the rest of my family has ever been to our nation's capital before. I spent a week or so there in high school on a 4-H trip (Citizenship Washington Focus) and a brief weekend in the early 90's when my BFF got married and I was her maid-of-honor. I remember so much of the 4-H trip. It is one I hope my daughter makes when she is old enough. We will see many of the same sights this trip but I know it will have a different meaning to her at 10 than it will at 16/17 as it will have a different meaning to me at 40 than it did a lifetime ago. I'm just not sure what to call this trip.

I could call it a year end field trip and let it be the closing event of 4th grade or I could call it the beginning field trip of her 5th grade year. It really doesn't matter one way or another. Just trying to figure out how to caption the scrapbook.

I always have this deliemma this time of year. Since we have always unschooled year round it is difficult for me to decide when one "grade" ends and another "grade" begins. Usually I use VBS in June as the official beginning of a new school year because that is the only place in our life where what "grade" she is "in" has any real bearing. With that in mind I suppose this is her 4th grade trip.

Since next year we are starting Ancient History in our second cycle through the chronological history of the world making this the final trip of 4th grade (where we have studied the modern era) might "fit" more neatly. Since the school year at Veritas ended Tuesday it makes sense on those terms as well. The last time we will be chained to someone else's school calendar.

When I return I will be starting that desk job I mentioned last month. We are both excited about the prospect. How long that will last when she realizes we have to be at work "early" 3 days a week rather than one is anyone's guess, but the situation we have at the office will be so much better for us both. We have office schooled before, the last half of her kindergarten year, and it was one of my favorite times of homeschooling her. Being in the office, away from the distractions of TV and toys, we were able to accomplish more in those short days than we ever have since.

I hope that she comes home excited about what she has seen and done in DC and Williamsburg. I hope that she will be willing to do some projects with me that tie in with what she will have seen and learned. I hope that we stick with the exercise plan we have devised and begin seeing results in terms of better health for both of us. Yes, when we return it will be a good time for a new beginning and thus a new school year so this trip is the final field trip of 4th grade...5th grade starts July 14th. That will give us about 6 weeks to process DC and then be ready to move back into the Ancients. Sounds like a plan.

Getting the itch

Spring is springing up all over and the geocaching bug is biting hard. If the stupid trees will stop spitting pollen everywhere so I can breathe again I'll be heading out into the field again soon.

We've got a lot of travel planned this spring and I need to get my geocaching premium membership activated again so I can search along our route as we go. Its that time of year again.

In other life news...

I am quitting my teaching job at Veritas. I decided that teaching in a schoolish environment was too at odds with my unschooling philosophy and I am counting the days until freedom. Three more weeks. Just three. The end is in sight and while I will miss my kids I am SO very ready for it to be over. Ever since my decision was made, my heart just hasn't been in it.

I may be taking a part time desk job to make up the income we'll be losing but its with an organization I am passionate about and my daughter will be able to come along and actually have my attention while I'm working. I think she'll learn some valuable office skills as well. I hope that comes to fruition but if it doesn't there is some reason I'm supposed to not be working right now. It would sure give us more time to geocache. :)

I LOVE THE FALL!

Because the poison ivy is beginning to die, the snakes are back in their holes for the most part and the ticks are back wherever ticks go when it gets cold. It was SO good to get back out today! The weather was perfect and the company made up for the fact that we only had a couple of finds.

We also stumbled on our first letterbox today! It was cool. I may throw a stamp in the cache bag for future occasions.

Today we went out to Shelby Farms looking for caches. We started with one of cgeek's "evil micros" out at the Farmer's market. I got the find on that one. It wasn't as evil as some of hers are known to be and I'm getting more familiar with how she thinks. :) We headed back to the picnic table and chowed down on the chicken salad I'd made and brought along. After lunch we went after "Calibration Station" but we only found the 1st stage. I'm not 100% sure how to log that actually. The second stage is on my to do list for very soon. Maybe even next weekend. I've got to figure out how to see where a given group of caches are. I thought I had picked Shelby Farms caches but none of the ones I picked seemed to be in the boundaries of the park itself. I think maybe the google maps feature will help me with that.

We tried for "Nothing to Cheer About" but we DNF'd that one. There was a lot of muggle activity at the nearby BMX track and I wonder if it has perhaps been geomuggled...either that or maybe it was somewhere in the muck we were wading around in.

We decided to head back over toward the farmer's market area and go after "Wetlands Sometimes" which is where we found the letterbox. We also found the cache and were able to swap some swag.

We had a brand new cacher with us today so she got to experience 1) a micro, 2) a stage of a multi, 3) a DNF and 4) a full sized cache with swag to swap and as a bonus 5) A letterbox. Pretty good variety for a newbie.

It was a perfect day for caching...and man have I missed it!

CITO Imagine what we could do...together.

Yesterday J-bear97 and I stopped and found "Pine Row" on the way home from work. I always carry wal-mart/kroger bags in my cache pack so we can CITO any cache areas we visit. To my dismay yesterday we encountered such a mess of trash that we didn't have sufficient bags or other equipment to carry it out. What bothered me so much about it is that this cache site is over the back of the "privacy fences" of an adjoining neighborhood and it honestly appeared that the folks that live over there are in the habit of just chucking stuff over the back fence. Maybe that's not the case, maybe this stuff was dumped by others or blown there by the wind (not likely as it is not an area that should get much foot traffic and its at the top of a hill) but still. We carried out what we could and disposed of it properly and we're planning to go back and clean up more with the proper equipment (gloves, big trash bags, those poky sticks) probably next week.

The ideal/habit of of CITO could be one of the best "selling points" for geocaching if all of us that play the game would do it consistently. Imagine. Imagine what it would look like if we picked up the cans and plastic bottles and bags in the parking lots when we were seeking LPCs. Imagine what we could do for our city parks, especially those where our logs consistently say "I'd never have known about this place if it weren't for this cache if we would just CITO everywhere we go. Heck, imagine the places we could find to put caches if we stopped and CITO'd places we noticed were trashed. Not to mention, picking up trash provides ideal "stealth" when muggles are about.

This is the month for CITO events...and those are wonderful. But what I'm talking about is the impact of the entire area's geocachers picking up the habit of carrying a trashbag on the hunt and CITO'ing each site we search. I remember hearing when Memphis used to get awards for being one of the nation's most beautiful cities. This scene brought home for me why we don't anymore. There are hundreds, if not thousands of caches in the greater Memphis area. If we CITO'd each of them...imagine the impact we could have...just imagine...

No Geocaching Here - Event Cache

I attended my first event cache tonight. It was way cool to get to put faces with the names I've seen in logs and on cache pages for the last few months. Alicia (sskaysee - 1/2 anyway) said from the log it looked like we had something over 40 people present. It was great.

Tripp and the girls showed up late, Morgan had cotillion tonight. I hope they had fun. We overflowed the one room we were in and ended up spread all over the restaurant so I didn't get to talk to them as much as I would have otherwise.

Prior to the event Jessi, who has decided on J-bear97 as her caching name, and I spent the afternoon doing some caching in the area. We finally scored "This Park Rocks!" on our third attempt with a hint from Sprout. We had a lot of fun with "Llama Spits Again", not that we saw the llamas. We did however get to spend several minutes petting a very nice strawberry mare and we also got to see geese landing, turtles mating and a slew of ducks. Our second failed attempt at "rocks" did result in the collection of an entire walmart bag full of trash so we did our CITO duty for the day. We also got our first "skirt lifter LPC" with "Stevi's Cache" I must say, I think they're pretty cool.

No, its not the most exciting scenery, but its neat to think that there are things hidden in places like that, where a ton of people walk by all the time and have no idea they're there. It's like being in on a secret. Remember how it was when you were a kid? Or when your kids were little? And everything, every rock, every tree, every bug was fascinating? Its kinda like that. Geocaching brings that sense of childlike wonder back for me. I think that's why I do it. It lets me not have to "mom" for a little while. It lets me go back to being a kid with a treasure map only this time there really IS something where X marks the spot. Not like when we were playing pirates as kids and all we had for our effort was a big hole and some angry moms because we dug up their yards. And for my daughter, mom's not mad because she's along for the hunt. Its fun to just get out and play together.

I continue to plot where I'd like to do another hide. Like Timbercreek, I want it to be somewhere special. I've asked permission to place one at our church but thus far we have no answer. I'm afraid that the answer will be no. They're a bit nuts about avoiding liability. Sad but I guess that's the "nature of the beast" these days. I'll keep thinking and looking. When its time, it'll come.

I'm itching. I hope its windburn and not poison ivy/poison oak. I don't see any evidence of blisters yet and I'd think I would by now. It could be psychological from finding that stupid tick. I HATE THOSE THINGS!!!! I can find one, flick it off, do a thorough tick check and still itch for days just at the thought of it. EWWWWWWWWW! I was all up in the bush looking for "Sleepy Hollow" today. That's one that's going to have a DNF for awhile. I'm not about to try that one again until the fall. Too many ticks and poisonous plants.

Tomorrow I have to work. Bummer! I'm ready for school to be out, its cutting into my geocaching! LOL! But we have a lot to look forward to tomorrow. Its Ben and Jerry's free cone day! Its also VW club meeting. And of course, I'm planning on caching between the two events. :) Priorities you know. Speaking of priorities...sleep is becoming one. Terbear out.

Ok...I am SO digging paperless caching

I talked my darling husband into giving me his pocket PC so I could try caching without fighting a sheaf of papers on a windy day. We tried it today for the first time while going looking for "Fields of Clover" and "Old Raleigh Cemetery"...it was so cool! I am going to LOOOOOOVE this.

We found Fields of Clover with very little trouble. I'm learning more about how to handle my GPS and what to look for that gives away the hides. There is a geotrail beginning to form to this particular cache, 3 months ago I probably wouldn't have investigated it, even if I HAD noticed it. Today, even though the tree cover was giving me some difficulty with my readings, I noticed the geotrail, followed it to where I thought I would hide a cache if it were me and BINGO! There she was. That felt pretty good.

We got to "Old Raleigh Cemetery" around 5 pm. I'm still not sure if we ever actually found the right entrance. The cache description said to look for a historic marker and there definitely wasn't one of those anywhere that we saw. In fact the sign was the lid to one of those large plastic storage boxes with the reflective mailbox letters on it that said "Raleigh Historic Cemetery". We went on in, thinking we'd find our way to the correct gate and then backtrack from there. Ultimately though the jungle-like undergrowth, complete with aggressive "wildlife" in the form of a fairly loud dog, proved a bit more than I felt like tackling that late in the afternoon with a skittish 9 year old along for the game. We'll talk to Spencersb at the meet and eat on Monday and get some insight and go after it again soon. Hopefully with a weedeater.

Speaking of the Meet and Eat. I'm so excited to finally meet some other geocachers. I've met cgeek and she's awesome. Its going to be nice to talk with folks that understand the addiction. I don't always get to see trippdyer and company at church and other than the CUMC Tech Teens crew that I've also gotten hooked on it most people look at me as if I've taken leave of my senses when I bring it up. Even explaining it doesn't get it across what's so attractive about tromping around a weed infested cemetery on a sunday afternoon looking for an ammo can or a tupperwear box full of "junk". Its going to be quite the challenge to avoid the "catch phrases" Geocaching, caching, geocache, cache, or geo and still get my fix of people who "get it" I'm afraid. LOL!

I want to spend some time tonight and tomorrow playing with designs for my patches and also maybe playing with the shrinkydink material for some "geocoins" for the Tech Teens. I did go back to hobby lobby on Saturday and buy some. It was just too cool to resist. :)

Guess that's all for now. Teribear out.

I found the coolest thing today!

Shrinky Dinks for Inkjets! The possibilities boggle the mind. Photo "geocoins" were the first thing that leapt to my thoughts. A photo of the "CUMC Tech Teens", who by the way now have their own account on geocaching.com, from one of our recent cache runs or other gatherings would make a lovely "signature item" for the team.

I'm still working on my patches. I found a neat product today that I THINK will make my patches "iron on" for those who don't have the time or desire to sew. Its a double sided fusible interfacing and I think that if I do it like I did the back of the last set and have it stitch with the last pass around the border to cover the bobbin threads that I will have made "iron on" patches. Stay tuned.

I'm hoping to hear soon what the status is on the meet and eat for next Monday. It appears our first choice of venue is no longer in business as of last Friday or Saturday. I'm really hoping we'll chose a new venue and keep the date. I'm looking forward to seeing cgeek again and to meeting all the other names I recognize from my collection of cache pages.

In homeschool news...we've decided on a return to no daytime TV on days that begin with the letter T. I think we've all noticed a marked decrease in creativity since we let that policy lapse. The good news is that geocaching is an educational activity and therefore is perfect for those lovely T-days that we've been having of late. Except for next Tuesday. That's Free Cone Day at Ben and Jerry's...gotta have priorities. :)

Adventures with Teenagers

One of my churchkids turned 16 yesterday and her parents allowed her to take today off to go to the DMV and get her license. Another of them goes to an Episcopal school and today was the last day of their Easter holiday. We hooked up for lunch around 1 and then we were off for an afternoon of geocaching. Yay!

It was interesting playing the leader for a new driver trying to follow in city traffic. She did well. We managed to pick up 6 caches today between 2 and 4:30.

Our first stop was "Mama Mia" which we'd gone after without success on Saturday. We'd been searching for a micro and completely overlooked the nano that was the actual hide. I'd never seen a nano "in the wild" before. Those things give a new meaning to the word evil. In a good way of course.

One of the neat things about this trip was that, totally by chance, none of the containers was alike and all the hides were very different. It was a great learning experience for me regarding the variety of hides that are out there in our urban environment.

From "Mama Mia" we went to "Butterflies". This was in a neat little "pocket park" that I had no idea existed. The container here was a metal candle or spice can and it is not handling the weather well. The log was soaked. I posted a needs maintanence log on this one and I'm hoping the cache owner will take care of it because its a really nice location.

Next it was on to "Sudoku Challenge - Hard". I was glad to have the younger, lighter people with me because I'm too old and too heavy to be climbing trees. It was a nice hide. ML took one of cgeek's wood geocoins, I already have one in my collection. cgeek's kind of a celebrity around our crew...we love her hides, evil though they may be. We left a mint tin that I'd been saving for an "evil micro" container in homage to the queen of the "evil micros".

Our next hunt takes the prize for biggest comedy of errors and I truly hope we didn't manage to get another of cgeeks caches muggled. *crosses fingers and prays hard* We went after "Marquett Park". It was a beautiful day and the muggles were everywhere, including sitting right at Ground Zero. I asked ML to stop and tie her shoe and check to see if the cache was where I thought it was planning to come back later and grab it when someone wasn't sitting right on top of it. Something got lost in translation though because she tried for it and got caught. The lady thought she'd stolen her cell phone! After much explaining and showing of the cache container, the GPSr and the cache pages we were able to convince her otherwise. We replaced the cache without further incident and the people there weren't inclined to take it but I'm still paranoid that it will end up gone and we will once again be the last people to "see it alive." Note to self - DO NOT Take teenagers on Stealth Required missions. Just don't.

"745 - CACHE" was left for another day. At least teenagers do learn. There was just too much muggle activity in the area to get it today, although we're certain of its location. It will wait for another time.

"A Walk In The Park" yielded a unique hide combining a carabiner and a decon container. When we opened the cache we found among the swag the dreaded used golf ball so we took that. We left an easter button and a pencil sharpener shaped like a small wrench. We figured that for a used golf ball we were definitely trading up. :)

We ended our day like we started it, with one of cgeek's evil micros, "On The Perimeter". This was one of my favorite hides of the day. The tiny bison tube could have easily been mistaken by the unobservant as some kind of cocoon. Very creative hide and in an area that we really didn't have to worry too much about muggle activity.

All in all it was a lovely day. Good hunting, good friends, good weather. Who could ask for more?

2007 CUMC GPS Easter Egg Hunt - recap

After much plotting this is what I came up with:

Two teams - you saw the patches below.
Two sets of eggs in different camo colors (thank you Walmart).
8 locations (they came in packs of eight)
Each egg filled with a "congratulations you found it" sheet (in case someone else found it before my kids did) and a rubber stamp.
Each team had a GPSr, the hunt booklet and a stamp pad.
I was available to be a PAF if they got stuck.

On the morning of the hunt, I went out alone with the GPSr and placed the eggs and took a single reading of the location. If I had it to do again I'd have done that more carefully but I'm a beginner and I was in a time crunch. I had designed the booklet with a place for the stamps, the rules of the hunt and a place on the back to record the coords for the teams to enter into their GPSr's.

I placed the eggs at various locations around our church and, since we have a rather large campus, I placed the last four and the prize box in places on our campus. This got everyone back on campus for the birthday party that followed. One of my churchkids in team CUMC Tech Teens turned 16 today.

The teams arrived at 2 and were given a gallon ziplock bag containing their patches, their booklets and their stamp pads. And then they were off on the hunt and I was off to get the stuff together for the party.

The hunt ended up taking about 1 1/2 hours and everyone seemed to have a great time. Egg #3 gave them all a problem and they had to call for a hint but otherwise it seemed to be just about the right level of challenge. Team Purple found the prize box first but elected to re-hide it and wait until Team Pink completed the hunt and then everyone picked their prizes at the party. They're all wanting to know can we do it again next year...so I must have done something right. Smile

After the party we finished up the day by doing some loggable caches and we found MUM's The Word, team trippdyer found Fogleman's Revenge and we looked for Mama Mia without success but I'm going back to check on that tomorrow on another cache run.

To see pictures check out www.deltageo.com

Today is the Day



I've got the rules printed out, the logs made, the eggs filled with cache notes and rubber stamps, the swag is bought, the eggs are ready to be hidden and these patches are made for all the players. I've been toying with the idea of a patch as my sig item so I wanted to see how hard they would be to make. I'm pretty proud of the way they turned out. I've got a couple of designs I'm playing with for my person patches but this is a special edition, limited run for the crew that is playing tomorrow. Team Pink has pink borders, Team Purple has purple borders. The bunny is the four colors of the geocaching.com logo. I think they're pretty cute.