Tuesday, September 30, 2008

small notes

--I love the beautiful gloss grape jelly takes on the minute you add the sugar to the juice. So pretty. I'm about 1/3 of the way through my jam project.

--It's scary how high Libby can get a swing going all by herself. She doesn't need me to push her because she can pump her way right up until the swing's so high she squeals with little thrills of fake fear.

--Joshua it seems doesn't want me to wash his football pants because then the lovely, bright white makes him "look like one of the wimps that don't play!" Two weeks down, four to go in the season. He doesn't carry the ball but he's a wide receiver. He's one of the boys that goes out and tells the quarterback what the play should be, you know the boys who rotate on and off the field every play.

--Life is easier with my new kitchen. Six months later I'm still in love. I've been canning nearly all month and I've yet to get frustrated enough to throw something. Last time I tried canning in my old kitchen I believe at least one hot pad and a wooden spoon went flying toward a wall. (not at any heads, Mom. I'm a big girl now.) There's a huge difference between 10 square feet of counter top and 50 square feet of counter top.

--I'm editing too many pictures. It was a lovely wedding, shot all in digital of course. I enjoyed being able to just get pictures developed and hand them off back in the day (and I miss my eye control focus on my film camera.) 200 pictures down, 500 pictures to go. I need to find my wrist brace. ouch.

Tuesday, September 02, 2008

We found one!

See?

We actually found two and a half yesterday. Sarah's holding the one she found. It was a toughie. We almost gave up and were about to give up when I found the annoying little note that said "keep looking," which of course annoyed us all enough to keep us hunting. We didn't bring anything to trade but we remembered to sign the log that time.
The first one of the day was harder than it should have been. It's supposed to be a three part hunt but we only found the first marker and couldn't even get to the second set without going on private property. We figure we're doing something wrong there.
The second one we gave up on after looking for 15 minutes and only finding an animal carcass and poison ivy (which we all avoided thank goodness.) The one Sarah is holding in the picture is our third cache we looked for. The fourth was also successful. I found that.
I have to report that the kids had a ball. They were sad when we had to quit; they asked when we could go out geocaching again. I can see why it's become so popular. It's so easy to just grab a few and it's perfect for families.
If you don't have a handheld GPS unit, you can also try Letterboxing. It's what geocaching started as and is still going on. There are websites for it too.
For the geocaching coordinates, we started at http://www.geocaching.com/ It's a huge website and it has the capability of downloading the coordinates directly to our Garmin GPS. (which is good because Sarah's lost the instruction book and we can't figure out how to enter coordinates when you aren't standing at the place you want to find.)