Letterboxing

This is our newest find this fall (Letterboxing) and we are still going strong with enjoyment and challenges! Quite honestly. . . we LOVE Letterboxing. It combines several of our VERY favorite things to do. . . hike and seek! ;-D Seriously though, we love to hike, it's part of our regular routine, and we love to still engage in anything that is treasure hunting'esque (don't bother looking it up, I just made it up!). If you want to learn more about Letterboxing and/or find some boxes to go hunting for in your area, go to www.letterboxing.org. There are like 593 boxes in our state - incredible! Sometimes we decide to go hunt a certain area so we just log online and print off the directions or sometimes if we have a field trip we check to see what's in that area that we can hunt for while we're there - SUCH fabulous fun and so adventurous! Daddy and the boys are working on creating our own family stamp to use for logging when we find a box and for our personal logbook - I'll be sure to post a pic of it when it's all done. Some of you may be familiar with geo-caching and that is pretty much the same thing just with a GPS system, rather than a compass. Since we hike on a regular basis we really wanted the boys to be able to fully understand and utilize their compasses, plus they were a gift from their Grandma & Grandpa L for their birthdays, so we're putting them to good use! Boy are we racking up the miles on those babies! ;-D Anyways, check out the link and plan your own family adventures.

Family Photos

We took advantage of the extra hands and had them snap a pic of our family! :-)


My Dad and P, Daddy & I and the boys, my baby brother and his wife and daughter.

Vacation

This is my baby brother, D, and his adorable little daughter, C. He was home for leave from Iraq for a few weeks and we were able to spend time with him and his family at my Dad & P's.


You can see how much the big boys love Uncle D - they think he's "it"! :-)


Littlest man is a fish - who has no fear! We have an eagle-eye on him!


Just having fun!


They would stay in the water ALL day and night, if we'd let them!

Georgia's Surgery

Our big girl had surgery to get fixed and get her do-claws removed, all 4 of them. She has to wear this lovely contraption for about a week so her sutures will have a chance to heal and hopefully be removed then. Poor baby, but she still looks so cute! Our girl proudly weighed in at 78lbs - she's 6mo old! :-)

Another First - Tent Camping

Our 1st experience camping in a real-life tent! Look at how awake they still are. . . at 1:16am in the morning! We had just finished up a late-night hike the park offered (it was fun hiking in the dark with limited flashlight use), and we had the munchies! :-)


These are our very special friends - the F family, who we were able to enjoy this experience with. We love you guys!


Look at them all. . . hard to believe they're all 6 now! And even harder to believe we've been getting together for almost 5yrs! Look at our babies!


The big boys and I enjoyed this wonderful experience together while Daddy & littlest man enjoyed some 1:1 time and he got to accompany Daddy to the office - such a big boy!
I cannot state enough how much we enjoyed this trip and what a wonderful job the park did at putting this program together - we so enjoyed ourselves. And our family has had an RV for over 9yrs so we love the outdoors and enjoy camping but it was a neat experience to tent camp. . . we will be buying a tent next year for sure to add to our future experiences!

Reading Anywhere. . . Reading Everywhere

These shots really speak to the truth about where we read/learn/discuss/research - yep, anywhere and everywhere! ;-) Boy isn't that the truth?! I walked out to the garage as we were getting ready to go for a bike ride and the boys were getting their shoes on. . . well, I found them hanging out together on the freezer just reading away. The next day we were outside playing in the backyard and they went back in the house and brought books out onto the deck and sat and read there. Reading is just a normal part of our everyday activities. . . just like eating and breathing!

Firefighters Survive Alive

Oh my goodness, this shot is just priceless! It truly captures how they felt. ALL. DAY! They were hooping it up! And their fire fighter hats were intact until bedtime and we could barely get them off of them for bath time! ;-D


Today we had our much-anticipated field trip to Survive Alive and we were very excited. I coordinated this field trip for about 10 kiddos and everyone really enjoyed themselves. The wonderful gentleman (a retired firefighter)who helped facilitate this program set-up for us was so great with the kids and just plain amazing! There was a police officer who came in and talked with us about his role with the police department and about gun safety. Then we spoke with the firefighters about fire safety and then we took the Survive Alive tour which involves fire simulation in a home. This gave the kids all good experience to test the knowledge of what they had just learned regarding fire safety and what to do in case of a home fire. They all did a great job! We really enjoyed our visit there and we also got to visit the Firefighters Museum which had an old fire wagon - it was amazing to see! After our visit we went over to Daddy's office and donned our new fire hats and chatted about our exciting field trip and what we learned. God bless the firefighters who so selflessly protect us!