SNAKES ALIVE!
After a long hiatus from geocaching, the GeoKidz and I finally had a chance to jump back into our favorite game/sport/obsession this weekend! Saturday, we attended the monthly meeting of the Georgia Geocacher’s Association, which was held this month at Little Mulberry Park in Dacula.
The feature presentation this month was given by Dr. Mark Patterson of the Georgia herpetological Society, with assistance from his slithery friends, the snakes. Not just any snakes, mind you… but snakes that are native to and prevelent in our backyards (literally) here in Gwinnett and Walton counties. He brought out some really beautiful critters, such as the black rat snake, the red rat snake (a/k/a “corn snakes”), the pine snake and even a small copperhead. (Don’t worry, the copperhead was kept in a sturdy plexiglass box the entire time!)
Photo Courtesy of The Georgia Geocacher's Association (www.ggaonline.org)
Dr. Patterson provided a wealth of information about these species. He discussed their habitats, what they feed on (mostly rats and mice, so they are actually good to have around. Since we now live in a very old farmhouse in a big ole meadow… I’m good with that. 😉 ), and what to do if you encounter a snake (screaming and running may be understandable, but unless it’s venomous, don’t kill it!). Did you know that one lone rat snake can curtail the rat/mouse population in its immediate area by over 19,000 rodents a year???? Before you aim that gun, think of all 19,000 of those mice moving into your home in the absence of their crowd-controlling predator!
Dr. Patterson also discussed what to do if you are bitten by a venomous snake. First, don’t panic and run. Panicking and running will increase your heart rate and your adrenaline production – both of which will only serve to speed up the spread of the venom throughout your body. Definitely not what you want to happen! Call 911 and do your best to stay calm. Do not apply a tourniquet, and do not do the old “cutting into the wound and sucking out the poison” routine you’ve heard about your whole life. All that does is make you bleed more and introduce a whole slew of new germs into your wound, greatly increasing your chances of infection.
The good news, according to Dr. Patterson, is that an extremely small number of people actually die each year from snake bits. I cannot recall the exact statistics, but the number is actually quite miniscule. So, the good news is that if you get bit, chances are you will make it just fine, so long as you seek prompt medical attention. Folks who have a much higher risk of complications from snake bites are the very young, the very old, and people with fragile immune systems. (Side note to any EMS folks out there…feel free to chime in on this in the comments and correct, add to, or otherwise expound on this info. You know WAY more than I do about this stuff!!!)
All in all, it was a fantastic meeting. The GeoKidz and I had a great time. We also kicked butt in the raffle following the snake presentation. GeoKid2 won a key chain for his collection, and I won a nifty little tote bag with the Georgia Geocacher’s Association logo on the front. We also met many other geocachers, some of whom we’ve “met” online discussing caches and events, but never in person.
After the meeting, the GeoKids and I went out in search of geocaches. It’s been too many months since we’d done so, and were just itching to get back into it. 🙂 We found one on Saturday, and then three on Sunday afternoon… including that pesky one hidden at the Oasis Bowling alley that we’ve searched for over the course of at least six months! And yes…we’d walked right past it a trillion times and somehow missed it. Till yesterday! Ha!
Sunday afternoon, we also went to Tribble Mill Park, which is a veritable gold mine of geocaches. We finished finding the last two of a series of caches honoring John Wayne: The Good (which we found on 01/02/11), The Bad, and The Ugly. The kids really enjoyed searching these out. As we walked back to the car, my eight-year-old GeoKid said very seriously, “I love nature. It’s all beautiful and stuff!”
And that’s what it’s all about. 🙂
Happy hunting, everyone!
So… It’s Been A While…
It has been quite a while since I’ve written a blog post (mid-May, I believe). Come to think of it, it’s been quite a while since I’ve gone geocaching, which explains in part why I haven’t blogged much. This is, after all, a blog about my (and the GeoKidz’) favorite hobby. 🙂
But, life gets in the way sometimes. Right now, our family is undergoing some pretty cataclysmic changes that are keeping us from our usual weekend geocaching adventures. They are ultimately changes for the better, to be sure…but there’s still a lot of upheaval right now. Beginning at the beginning, kinda….
Some of you may remember that in late May/early June, my Prodigal Son, GeoTeen2, went missing. Not kidnapped or anything horrific like that, thank God… he just up & ran away. He was gone a full seven days before he was caught. A whole week. One Hundred and Sixty-Eight Hours. Ten Thousand, Eighty Minutes… of not knowing where my kid was. If he was safe. If he was dead. If he was hurt and in a coma somewhere. If he was eating. If he was getting in trouble. If he fell into the wrong hands and was trapped in a nightmare. If he was coming home. If he was even in Georgia anymore. If, if, if…. IF! It was the longest, most exhausting, most horrific week of my entire life – all thirty-eight years of it so far. I was playing phone tag with detectives. Answering myriad questions. Asking even more. Emailing as many of his Facebook friends as I could. His sister was scouring through Loganville, finding as many of his friends as she could, searching for him, for some clue, ANY clue, as to where he was. I even began to solicit local radio stations for help. His siblings and I were terrified we’d never see him again. Here’s a friendly tip for you to stow away in your memory: If you are looking for your MIA teen, never, ever, EVER Google “what to do when your teen runs away”! The statistics of runaways and what can happen to them are horrifying and will do nothing to contribute to your peace of mind.
Yeah, so…that was a bad week. Thank God they found him…thank God. Safe and sound and in one piece. The Loganville Police Department, and in particular Detective Massey, were absolutely out-freaking-standing during this time. They worked hard to find him for me. They were accessable, responsive, patient with my dumb questions, my moments of panic, and my random, miscellaneous emails/calls/messages whenever I thought of any little thing, no matter how absurdly ridiculous or tiny, that maybe, just might help. His little disappearing act got him another 30 days, but I’m OK with that… I know where he is and he can’t take off from there! 🙂 Ha! He’ll be home soon. Speaking of home…
The biggest change of all. The most difficult. I hesitate to write of it.
Our family is in the process of moving. We are not moving far at all, just a little over six miles down the road, but move we must. As a newly-single mom, I simply cannot afford the mortgage, the bills (especially the inside-the-city-limits water/sewage bills…OUCH!), and whatnot. And even if I could…honestly, I think a change of location just might be good for us, especially a certain teenager.
Now, don’t go thinking that you’re getting rid of us. Oh no, not that easy!!!!! 🙂 We are not moving far at all. Just far enough to where we will be in a somewhat rural area (with cows for neighbors…yay!) and different schools. But not so far that we’ll have to change churches and babysitters and scout troops and whatnot. Just enough change to be good for us, and just enough stays the same to give the kids some measure of stability in the midst of it all. Loganville is still our hometown, and we are still firmly rooted in the community. The big move happens within the next week or so, so this weekend is my last bit of free time to frantically scramble to get everything packed and ready to go. I made progress last weekend, but still have a good bit to go. OK, most of it. haha. Since I put the “pro” in procrastination and excel at the last-minute-freakout-to-get-everything-done, haha, I predict this will be a really productive weekend. 😀
I love where the kids and I are moving. We are renting a 101-year-0ld farmhouse that just OOZES peace and tranquility…qualities we all very much need right now. But I’m sad, too. Deeply sad. Leaving this house we live in is probably the hardest part of all. When we bought it, I swore I’d live there for the rest of my life. There’s an amazing story behind our home. The community poured out SO MUCH LOVE and so much hard work to create this home for us. So many did so much with a ton of love. To walk away from that feels like a betrayal of everyone’s love and everyone’s hard work. It feels like a slap in the face to those who poured themselves into the project. It feels disresepctful. It feels shameful…disgraceful. It feels like failure. This isn’t how the story was supposed to end. Nope, I was going to stay planted RIGHT THERE till the very end of my days…not because of the actual house itself so much, as the love that was poured into it on our behalf.
But…well, Life has a way of interrupting our plans. This is not a decision I reached easily. This is not even a decision I want to make. But… when all is said and done, I’ve got to do what is best for my family. My kids and their well-being come first. Period. We need to live in a more affordable home in a more affordable area. We need a fresh start in so many ways. When it comes right down to it…. We’ve got to move. Just no other way around it. So… move we shall.
So, that’s why there have been no blog posts about quirky adventures and random travels as we hunt down cleverly-hidden geocaches all over Georgia. There’s just been no time. Our world has collapsed, shattered, and imploded. Picking up the pieces and rebuilding a whole new world is a full-time job, and then some.
But once we’re all moved and settled in, you better believe that the GeoKidz and I will be back out there, hunting for our hidden treasures…using a billion-dollar satellite system to find Tupperware hidden in the woods, having zany adventures along the way.
There are lots of geocaches in the area to which we are moving.
I’ve already checked. 🙂
THANK GOD IT’S FRIDAY!
Even if it is the dreaded “Friday the 13th,” I’m so glad that this week is over. Ever have one of those really horrific, awful weeks when absolutely positively NOTHING goes right? And where the things that DO go wrong, go as wrong as they possibly can? Oh, nothing drastic or earth-shattering – nobody has died, fallen severely ill, lost a job – nothing truly life-altering happened. It’s just one of those weeks. Family stuff, teen stuff, job stuff, traffic stuff… just a lot of heartbreaking STUFF in general. A lady on a local message board has this saying on her avatar: “I try to take it one day at a time – but sometimes, several days attack me all at once!” Yes, that’s the kind of week I’ve had. A week of “Mondays,” so to speak. Just enough to where it all becomes overwhelming… especially when most of it is completely out of my control and there’s not a darn thing I can do to fix anything – that’s the worst, haha.
I’m hardly the only one, though. Folks all over have had weeks just as rough and even far worse. It’s just one of those things you go through in life – some good, some bad, some just plain “blah.” It’s just the way it goes. 🙂 God never promised that life would be easy. Quite to the contrary… the night before Jesus was crucified, He warned His disciples:
“I have told you these things, so that in me you may have peace. In this world you will have trouble. But take heart! I have overcome the world.”
Through this long and winding road called life, we’ll have to slog through some serious amounts of sludge and yucky stuff. But the good news is that we don’t have to slog through it alone. He’s right there in the trenches with us! He is right here in the trenches with me, even when I am gasping for breath, grabbing for that Light that I KNOW is there even though at times it’s but a faint flicker off in the distance… trusting the Healer, even while I’m breaking to pieces… unable to hold on but trusting – KNOWING – that the Anchor is holding me until I can.
And, in time, you and I and everyone else going through things that cause us such pain will come out the other side. One day, we will look back and see how God was at work even in the worst of times. It may not be apparent now, but it will be. Just hold on a mite longer, friends, and He’ll get you through it.
Happy Friday!!
PS – there’s a great song I heard on the radio this morning that pretty much inspired this post. I’m going to try to embed the video in this post somewhere, but if that doesn’t work, please CLICK HERE and watch/listen. It’s a truly awesome song that was just what I needed to hear today.
WELCOME, Loganville/Grayson Patch Readers!
Greetings from our little corner of Loganville!!! Thanks so much for stopping by and checking out my humble little patch of cyber space!. This blog follows our family through one (mis)adventure to another – from our high-tech treasure hunts (geocaching) to camping trips to collecting cards for our deployed military to just plain getting lost while running errands…. Just the life of an ordinary Loganville family, keeping things running day-to-day and searching out adventures along the way! You can read a more detailed intro to our family by clicking HERE. 😀
Thus far in the short life of Geocaching Adventures, posting has been mostly limited to, well, our adventures in Geocaching. Not quite sure what geocaching is? Click HERE and read all about it. 😀 It’s a simple concept: I use a billion-dollar satellite system and a hand-held GPS to find tupperware hidden in the woods. 😉 Sounds lame, but is actually quite fun. Add to that the fact that I have NO sense of direction at all (not even a bad sense of direction!!!) and it gets quite interesting. 😉 The joy is in the journey; the destination is just the icing on the cake. 😀
Since Sharon Swanepoel, editor of the Loganville/Grayson Patch (an online newspaper chock-full of good local info and stories) invited me to be one of the blogs featured in their “Local Voices” section, I figured that now would be a good time to broaden the scope (and frequency) of posting here. In addition to reading about our wanderings and the everyday trials and tribulations that go along with having a large family, you will also read more about “Operation Love From Home” and what we are doing to support our deployed military and any other topic under the sun that strikes my fancy at the moment. I’m pretty A.D.D. (literally and truly), so my interests and adventures (or misadventures, as the case may be) vary widely. 🙂 So, if you are brave enough, hop in, buckle up, hang on, and enjoy the ride!!!!!
Here are a few posts about our adventures that you might enjoy catching up on:
A Wonderfully, Wander-Full Day
See ya in the funny pages! 😉
MamaKat & Family
What a Month!
As I mentioned earlier this week, April was one massive whirlwind of events! Some were good, some not so good, but all of them were exhausting. 😉 Thank God for coffee, that’s all I can say – ha!
It all started with the littlest GeoKidz and I attending the Georgia Geocacher’s Association April meeting at Mistletoe State Park in or near Augusta, GA. Yes, during Masters weekend! I am not a golf fan in the least, so I didn’t much care about all the fuss over who’s playing in the Masters, who’s winning, who’s losing… WHO CARES?! 😉 (Sorry to all golf fans out there – no offense intended… I’m just not into sports much at all.). The weather was absolutely gorgeous, and it was a PERFECT day to be outside. Of course, the pollen count that day was roughly ten trillion, so the Kidz and I were all stuffy and fighting off pollen-induced sore throats.
The highlight of the day was the game of “human checkers” that the event organizers put together. I have pics on my camera that I hope to download tonight (I’ve been saying that for two weeks, so don’t hold your breath TOO much… I put the “PRO” in “Procrastination”…got it down to an art form. 😉 ) They had cut out huge plywood squares big enough for folks to stand on, and painted them red and black. The people playing the red checkers were given red t-shirts and red bandanas. The black checker people had black t-shirts and black bandanas. 🙂 At each end of the checkerboard, there were ladders upon which the team captains sat. They had a perfect overview of the board and could order their people where to move. GeoKid2 had been dying to play checkers all day, so he jumped right in as a black checker. 🙂 He had a great time playing for the first five or ten minutes, then he was “jumped” by the red team – game over for the little fella! He took it in stride though and thought it was all just the funniest thing! After the game, the kids and I took off and found a couple geocaches hidden in the park. There are several more I want to find, but since this was approximately two-and-a-half hours from home and it was getting late in the day, we decided it was best to go ahead and mosey on back towards Loganville and call it a day. 🙂 I’m pretty sure that day was the only day we were able to get out and hunt some caches… stupid “real life,” intruding on my hiking/playing time! Grrr! Ah well, it was better than nothing. 🙂
My Prodigal Son (GeoTeen2) returned home on April 21 – a/k/a the Thursday before Good Friday, a/k/a “Maundy Thursday.” So far, so good. Keep your fingers crossed and send up the prayers that he stays on track this time and continues doing what is good (and court-ordered – lol) and avoiding what is bad. 🙂 Easter was the usual whirlwind of activities, culminating in a beautiful Easter service and then the traditional dinner and egg hunt at the in-laws’ house.
This past weekend, the Geokidz and I – yes, all four of them! – went camping together. GeoKid2 is wrapping up his first year in cub scouts (awww….cute!) and this was the annual “Family Camping” event held up at Mount Rainey Mountain near Clayton, GA. We had a GREAT time (except for GeoTeen1, who is terrified of the dark and the woods… .and seeing as how there wasn’t much anything by way of city lights or any lights in the camping area after sundown… she stayed curled up in a ball in the tent zipped up tight while the rest of us roasted marshmallows. She refused to come out or even budge from her hidey-corner till daylight). GeoKid1 had his first-ever experiences shooting BB guns and bows & arrows…he earned a couple cub scout belt loops for his accomplishments. GeoTeen2 likewise got to partake of the shooting of BBs and pointy things, as well as saving the day and helping me get the camp fire started when it was being stubborn. 🙂
All in all, April was fantastic… lots of great things happened, some rough things happened, but in the end, God is good and so is life. 🙂
Rock on, everyone!
Updates coming!
April has been a frenetic blur of activity…from the April Georgia Geocacher’s Association meeting, to work being a zoo, to church stuff, to cub scouts events and our first scout camping trip (this past weekend – I’m so exhausted!), to easter AND prom…on the SAME weekend…. to our latest project to show our deployed troops some support and luv….yeah…haven’t stopped till now! I will have a wide variety of updates to give you soon, hopefully tonight, and pictures too! (Assuming, of course, this day-long caffeine infusion I’m working on remains effective past 8 p.m…. LOL!)
Happy Monday, folks!
I leave you with this thought, blatantly stolen from Facebook but too good not to share:
May 1st Prayer…Now I lay me down to sleep ♥ one less terrorist this world does keep ♥ with all my heart I give my thanks ♥ to those in uniform regardless of rank ♥ you serve our country and serve it well ♥ with humble hearts your stories tell ♥ so as I rest my weary eyes ♥ while freedom rings our flag still flies ♥ you give your all, do what you must ♥ with God we live, God we trust ♥ Amen
Weekend Wanderings
The GeoKids and I managed to escape a little bit here & there over the weekend. Friday night, we managed to slip out and find a cache in the Monroe area prior to us picking up the traditional Friday Night Pizza.
Saturday, hubby and I were supposed to visit GeoTeen2. We were not able to go up there the first Saturday he was there, so this would be our first visit in the 10 days or so he’s been there. Unfortunately… we ran into heavy construction traffic on I-85. It was massive gridlock! An hour and 20 minutes into our trip, we were still a good 35 miles away.
Finally, I had to cave in and head for home once we got to the next exit. We only had 45 minutes to make it to the YDC facility and even on a good traffic day, no way would we make it in time. To say I was upset would be an understatement. Hubby was really annoyed by my crying and level of upsettedness (<— new word, just invented! yay me!). It was NOT a good trip at all, to say the least. I felt HORRIBLE, because I’d PROMISED The Kid we’d be there Saturday…and of course, he had NO WAY of knowing why we failed to show up. I did get to speak to him Sunday night and explain that we hadn’t abandoned him on purpose. Hopefully, this Wednesday I’ll be able to make it to see him. Next Saturday, we are NOT going because I’ve already RSVP’d to the Georgia Geocacher’s Association April Meeting, which is taking place at a state park I’ve never been to. Because GeoTeen2 was in YDC this time LAST month, I’d missed the March meeting. This YDC stuff is getting really old, and I’m not going to cancel pre-existing plans again. Not that I don’t love GeoTeen2; just that I’m sick of the negative impact this jail stuff is having on my life (not to mention his). He gets mail from us, and I’ll see him the following Saturday, but I’m just not cancelling any more plans. I’m not going to put my entire life on a shelf while he’s in there. It’s one thing if this was a random or one-time occurrance, but this is the THIRD time since NOVEMBER. Nope… I’m way over it. Way. Maybe, please God, he’ll get his head together this time and just do what he is supposed to do, and life will be good. Or not. But I can’t obsess over it or I will completely explode. Or implode. Either way, it won’t be pretty. Pretty much hanging by a thread as it is so… yeah.
Sorry for the slide/rant there… at any rate, Saturday’s visit with GeoTeen2 did NOT happen. We made it back home at 3:00 (keep in mind, we left home at *12:30*!!!!). Being frustrated, upset, depressed and in dire need of sunshine and fresh-ish air, the little kids and I went for a quick geocaching run.
I discovered a series of caches in Oxford, GA, that are not very far away. The GeoKidz and I had to be home by 6:00, so we weren’t able to do very many. We found two, and Did Not Find (“DNF”) one. But we really enjoyed the search! I’ve never really “been” to Oxford before, other than just passing through. It’s really a nice little town with a lovely paved walking path that we got to explore. 🙂 After we found our second cache (which, as usual, GeoKid1 found after I had stepped RIGHT OVER IT on my way to investigate “a suspicious pile of sticks”), we got back on the path and heard, “So, didja find it??” LOL Yes, we finally bumped into fellow Geocachers on the trail! Not only did we meet a cacher, we met “RustyG” and another fella whose name escapes me. RustyG has a whole series of “Historical Georgia” geocaches. They are set in historical areas (duh… LOL) and are fabulous. Earlier this year, the GeoKidz and I had spent an entire day doing nothing but that historical georgia series (I blogged about it, of course, LOL – I think it was back in February sometime). So it was cool that out of all the random Geocachers in GA, we ran into him.
Sunday was a gorgeous day for geocaching – 80 degrees and SUNNY! After church (which was excellent, inspiring, and awesome as usual), we again ran out the door to escape and enjoy the good weather while we could. Kids + Outdoors = A Good Thing! This time, we went to do some caches in Stone Mountain Park, one of my favorite places ever. 🙂 Unfortunately, I didn’t plan it out so well. I had a hard time finding the general locations of some of them (where to park and whatnot, or where one was even located), not to mention the time I accidentally exited the park by mistake and got lost trying to get back in….D’oh!!) so we spent a good bit of time driving around. Less than fun. BUT the times we WERE out and about hunting caches was awesome! We found two, DNF one. The last one was located on one of the Nature Trails. I’d never, ever been on the nature trails at Stone Mountain before, and neither had the kids. They LOVED it!!! I lost my GPS signal for quite a while as we searched for the last one, and then when I did get it back, it was very jumpy. We searched all over for the darn thing, and did not find it anywhere. The important thing is that we DID find our CAR again at the end of the day – LOL! 😀 Anyway, after unsuccessfully trying to find cache number three, we called it a day and went home.
We didn’t find as many geocaches as I’d wanted, but the important thing is that we were OUTSIDE and really enjoyed the weather and the scenery. Can’t wait to go back! My GeoKid1 also got her first tick during our adventure, which caused no shortage of screaming hysteria when it was discovered. GET IT OFF ME DON’T TOUCH ME MAKE IT GO AWAY DON’T TOUCH ME IT WILL HURT IF YOU GET THE TICK OFF MAKE IT GO AWAY!!!!! etc. Yes, I had remembered to bring the Deep Woods Off bug repllant with us. No, I did not remember to actually apply it. #MomFail! On the bright side… you better believe none of us will forget it NEXT time!!!!
All in all, the weekend wasn’t *quite* what I’d hoped for, but overall, still a good one nonetheless. 🙂 The GeoKids were in charge of the camera both days, so a plethora of pictures will follow once I get them downloaded. 🙂
Have a fabulous week, y’all!
A Caching Quickie
FINALLY, I have broken my long streak of being cooped up indoors and not being able to breathe semi-fresh air (this IS Atlanta, after all…full of pollen and polutants, but hey, allow me my delusion for a moment, ‘k? 😉 )!
Since our family has to wake up SO freakin’ early in the mornings (and I am not by nature a morning person…I’m a night person, which is good because I like to hang out with these folks a lot, haha! Always gotta be hunting something, I guess! 😀 LOL!), usually by the time I get home I’m exhausted and ready to crumple into an incoherent heap. And usually, that’s pretty much what I do – dinner, kids’ baths, homework, and then…CRASH!
But last night, I’d had ENOUGH of being cooped up!!! Enough, I say! Traffic was uncharacteristically kind to me, and I arrived at the GeoKids’ daycare a few minutes – like three – before 6:00 – something that almost NEVER happens, though I leave my office at 4:30 on the dot. Took them home, coerced my teen into browning some ground beef for me so I could get a head start on sphaghetti for dinner, and then essentially turned right around and took GeoTeen1 to youth group. Home less than 45 minutes, but that’s much longer than we are usually home several nights a week, LOL!
I figured that we had just enough daylight for me and the GeoKids to find a couple of the nearby local caches. And by local, I mean a mile or less from our house! #winning! 😉 I didn’t bother to change clothes from work because (a) I hadn’t really had time, and (b) from the descriptions, I figured both were in nice, well-paved areas that would not necessitate crawling thru thickets or slogging thru mud. OK, well, I was half right! 😉
Our first didn’t even require our car GPS to figure out where the general location was… it was the “Downtown/Main Street USA – Loganville” cache. Main Street isn’t particularly huge, and if you are going for smack-dab center of the street/nifty historical value, there’s pretty much only one spot real good for that. 🙂 However, that said, it took a little longer than I expected to find it, haha… Had to search pretty methodically before I found the thing. I was a little nervous, as I couldn’t really see where I was sticking my hands…there was a wasp sleeping on the flagpole next to us, and the whole time I kept thinking, “Oh PLEASE don’t let there be a bees’ nest hiding in here anywhere!” Ha! (Note to self: add gloves to cache supply bag asap….!) GeoKid1 was in charge of the camera and was snapping pics right & left (most of which came out blurry, as you’ll see, but it’s all good!). Finally found the cache, signed the log, and away we went to cache number two!
After we conqured this one, we moved on to the next… it was the “Silver Bullet #4” geocache. The hint made me think it was located in a similar urban/commercial-type area that would be a breeze to get to.
Yeah, not so much. More like an area of future development that has not reached the paving stage yet. And if you live in GA, you know that for a week solid, we’ve had nothing but heavy downpours and thundrstorms. Fun time! Yay! Slogging thru mud in dress shoes! (They are brand new, but thankfully only paid like $3 for them at thrift store so I wasn’t overly freaked out. 🙂 ). Fortunately, much of the ground was firm-packed earth/fine gravel-like stuff so it wasn’t TOO bad… only had to slog thru one truly oozy and icky area briefly. The kids, of course, LOVED it! Jump! Splash! Splat! Ooze! Fun times. 🙂
GeoKid2 found it in no time flat. I had a pretty good idea, based on the description, of exactly what we were looking for. He made a beeline for it once we saw it (not saying what “it” is so as not to spoil the fun for others!) and sure enough, the cache was hanging out right where I thought it would be. 🙂
We finished finding our geocaches by 7:45, then traveled the .06 mile back home to finish making dinner before having to pick up GeoTeen1 from youth group.
All in all, it was a super-quick cache run that provided a nice diversion to our typical weeknight drugery and gave us all a much-needed shot of Kid Fun for the day. 🙂
Thanking God we’ve made it to Thursday… one more day, and the weekend is here! Woot! Have a good one, folks!
So it’s been a WHOLE MONTH (or more)…!
Yep, here it is… a month or more since I’ve been geocaching!!!! Horrors!!! I’m in serious withdrawal in a big way, but Life has NOT cooperated by any means! We’ve got a lot going on, to say the least.
GeoTeen2 came home as scheduled. We got him re-enrolled in school, etc… and then a whole two-and-a-half weeks later (this past Wednesday, in fact) – BAM – he ends up right back in juvie. He STILL hasn’t figured out that when the judge tells you that you MUST go to boot camp, well, you really MUST. “Oversleeping” or “forgetting what time it was” and so on are NOT adequate reasons for missing five days of BC and skipping school twice. So… away we go again. On the bright side, he’s in a different place now that is only five miles or so from my office, so I wont’ have to miss much work to go pick him up when he’s released, to the delight of my wonderfully-understanding bosses. Visiting hours are also at a better time, so that makes life easy too. 🙂 Here’s hoping it really sinks in this time and we don’t ever have to do this again… besides being heartbreaking and such, it’s also just plain exhausting. 😦
In other news, there’s just been a lot going on in every area of life. GeoKid2, The Boy, has been back into cub scouts again on Monday nights. This past Wednesday, I ended up in a Bible study/mentorship meeting that USUALLY takes place on Saturdays (only for the next month or two, then I’m done), but ended up HAVING to be on this particular night for a variety of reasons/schedule conflicts. Normally no problem, except that for the fact that during Lent, our church is doing a study on “40 Days of Community” via various small groups…and mine just happens to meet on Thursdays, cuz that’s the one with childcare so that’s the one I can go to, LOL. Oh, and I forgot, on Tuesday, GeoTeen1 had her bi-weekly counseling appt, which is usually on Fridays since that’s that night GeoTeen2 does NOT have bootcamp…but for a variety of reasons, it ended up being on Tuesday, just this once. So this week has been NON-STOP – MondayTuesdayWednesdayThursday…. and here we are, FINALLY at FRIDAY! Oh, wait… forgot to mention last weekend, I went HERE with these folks – it was EXTREMELY fun and I had a GREAT time (my newest adventure/addiction, along with geocaching, LOL…hmmm…wonder if I can combine the two??? LOL! Probably not…hmmmm….) ~ so I’ve been going NON-STOP since Saturday of last weekend!!!! 😮 It was a perfect storm of all our carefully-planned, carefully-coordinated commitments crunching together in one fell swoop in one week, right after each other. Taken individually, and staying where they belong, the aforementioned commitments are manageable. Squash them altogether into a much-condensed time frame, and you get my life this week. LOL!
Not every week has been this extreme…in fact, I think this past week is the MOST extremely busy week I’ve had in years, if ever. Holy cow. But life, overall, has been chaotic to some degree or another and has kept me away from the trails and my GPS and my geocaching. GeoTeen1 is working as a volunteer at an auction tomorrow (Saturday) morning, but after it ends at 2 (and I hope I can score some cool deals there!), there’s NOTHING planned. NOTHING. 🙂 I was so excited about tomorrow, because after the youth auction, me and the GeoKidz had planned to take full advantage of the extended daylight hours and find us some caches!!! And I’d planned the same for Sunday afternoon, after church. (yeah, yeah, yeah… I’ll squeeze in laundry and house cleaning somewhere in there, but I’m sick of being cooped up inside… MUST. ESCAPE. SOON. MUST. COMMUNE. WITH. NATURE. MUST. FIND. GEOCACHES!)
BUT… Old Man Weather seems bent on ruining my plans for escape. Turns out tomorrow there is a 70% chance of rain all day, and a 50% chance on Sunday! Seriously. :::facepalm::: My one free weekend to geocache, and…. boom. Rain. and more rain. and still more rain! Maybe the weatherman will be wrong and the rain will hold off until evening. I’m hoping so. If I don’t escape soon and get some “OUTSIDE” time, I just might go insane. More than normal, I mean. 😉 Either that, or I just might spontaneously combust into a huge ball of stress. Neither of which would be much fun, so… rain? Please go away till after sunset!!!
Here’s hoping we can make our escape.
Cheers,
MamaKat & Co.
No caching this weekend…
…yesterday was a major “spring-cleaning” day at home, after a Saturday morning Bible study. Got much of it done (i.e., our house is ALMOST liveable again – LOL) but it took alllll day. And haven’t even started on the outside yet. Ack! 
Today, GeoTeen1 and I went to church as usual, and then off to visit GeoTeen2 up in juvie. Thank God, he’s getting out on Friday and will be home again! Happy about this on multiple levels: (1) My kid will no longer be in jail. Pray he learned his lesson this time!; (2) I no longer have to drive up to Gainesville to visit him… just in time, too – gas was $3.24 a gallon today! Ack! (which is one reason why I didn’t bother to go caching today, but that’s another rant for another time, LOL); (3) I no longer have to wake up and the super-icky hour of 7:00 a.m. to attend the 8:45 a.m. service at church. Yep, it’s back to the good ole, contemporary 11:07 service again…YAY!!!!!!!! Getting UP at 8:45 is so much better than having to BE SOMEWHERE by 8:45 – LOL! 
So, my update this week is…that there is no update this week. 😉 Have a super-fantastic Monday and week… see you on the flip side. 🙂
GeocachingAdventures 
