Letterboxing

Fun new experience for us - letterboxing!  Some friends of mine are into it and invited us along for their latest trek to see what it's like.  To find out more for yourself, look here.  It's a bit like geocaching meets stampin-it-up autograph collecting meets treasure map riddles.  Or something like that.  So we found ourselves hiking through a woodsy park on a sunny Sunday afternoon.  And this was a BRILLIANT location for a first ever "treasure hunting" experience, let me tell you!  It is one of my favourite parks because I have to drive through a creek to get there in the first place, so I have this sense of braving the rapids on a daring, epic adventure before I've even arrived.

I am beyond impressed with my friend - who is ready to pop with her second child at any moment.  She marched through the woods as if it was no big deal.  As if the freakishly steep hills and bizarre steps and 90 degree heat didn't even phase her.  She did FAR better than I did in that regard.  I don't tie my SHOES as well as she did tramping through the woods.

I love this trail.

I'll pretend that my boys remembered our "be sure to be discrete" lecture and didn't jump around like wild monkeys upon the final discovery.

This is Scout's "I'm being forced to learn something new and it's killing me because don't you realize that I already know everything?" expression that he wore as my friends explained how it all worked.

And this is Scout's typical "aftermath" expression.  Everything Scout feels, he feels a whole lot.  Whether it's the elation BEFORE a discovery, or the let-down after.

His spirits were lifted with a spontaneous wade into the creek to cool down our hot feet.

This pile started out with just shoes and socks.  But more and more items of clothing were added as more and more body parts dipped into the cool water.  Before I knew it, Scout was up to his neck.  HOW he managed to get up to his neck in about a foot of water, I still have no idea.  I was too stunned to get a picture of it.

We then dragged them out of the water to dry off at the playground.  They had fun, until Scout realized that the fun was about to end.  Cue in the let-down pose.

We then returned home and Vee painted Chase's fingernails and piggies.  Naturally.  What choice did we have?  He was mortified at their condition upon removing his shoes at the creek, I'm sure of it.