geocaching

In November Noah and Evie started attending a 4H group of homeschoolers. They had to decide on a kind of group project to do and also some individual projects. Someone brought up the idea of geocaching as "treasure hunting" and Evie was captivated and kept arguing for the group to do it. Unfortunately for her, the group decided on something else (building a Lego city) but she still had the freedom to do it on her own. 

So Terry did some researching and we went out for our first geocache on a beautiful Friday morning. Geocaching is exactly like treasure hunting but instead of a pirate map, you follow GPS coordinates on your phone through an app. Once you are close enough to the cache, you have to search that immediate area to discover a small container/geocache. When you do there's usually a pad of paper or scroll to sign in and see who last found the cache. But the kids' favorite type of cache is one that's big enough to exchange "treasures"/junk. We had some little bears from a garage sale that seemed appropriate to give away since we are The Six Bears.

Our very first find was not far from our house and was supposed to be a quick grab and go, but it took us a good ten minutes since we'd never done it before. We did finally succeed though, of course.

It was an egg in a tree!

Our second cache was again, not far from our house and required a bit of hiking, which was great! Noah found this one and they were all super excited since they could exchange treasures. 

We tried to find one on the bike path but it had been moved due to the construction.  

So I took the littles over to the park while Terry took the olders to find another cache nearby. It was itty bitty! 

Ezra has been our baby that climbs the most. He's all over the house and tables where he is not supposed to be. At the park he climbed up this curved ladder he was much too small for. I was going to try to take his photo before he got too high but he was too fast for me. I accidentally took this funny photo as he slipped through the ladder and I caught him.

From there we thought we'd do one more before lunch but it took us forever! Daddy finally found it and we were darn ready for lunch at McDonalds with a giftcard. 

A couple weeks later we went out again, starting near our house by the creek. It was super easy to find and such a pretty location. 

We saw another one on the map very near, just on the other side of the bridge. So we walked under it and hiked a bit but found the cache was on the other side of the creek. So we had to walk all the way back and drive there, but Evie did end up finding it. 

I was really curious about this house for sale in the country that was not far from some friends so we took a drive. We looked at the house and afterwards stopped by Paul and Jana's. Terry and the kids had visited before but I hadn't. They have such a beautiful spot on the creek and it was great! That's Noah and Jack in his tree house.

We found one more easy cache on our way home. More treasures!