Let the dishes wait a minute

My husband went out of town last week and I’m not totally sure when he’ll be back. Three minutes after he left, I missed his face. Three minutes after I missed his face, I missed the extra set of hands to help with all the household tasks that pile up and sap my will to live. Three minutes after that, I got sick. Naturally. Because if life is going to pile on the stress, it will definitely pile it on all at once. Because, well, that’s life.

I spent two days laying in bed. I didn’t even really sleep. My only symptoms were my entire body ached and my head felt completely fuzzy. Oh, and I felt incapable of remaining upright. So I mostly channel surfed, read, and wished I felt better. Friday I probably could have gotten up and accomplished something productive at 2:00 in the afternoon. But since I knew I was flying solo for Halloween shenanigans, I opted to save my strength for that night. Good call.

I then used the saved up strength to deliver crap to a neighborhood party. My husband had volunteered a table and an appetizer. I had stupidly volunteered an ice chest of water simultaneously. You can’t very well back out at the last minute when you are the one producing the table everyone’s crap is going to go on. But all of it required effort to produce. And by “produce” I mean I ordered wings from Papa Johns and heated them up in time for the party. Don’t judge. They were having pizza at the party. This was an acceptable item to bring. 

This was an acceptable kid to bring.  Iron Patriot.  Someone had to explain to me who he was.  I have been assured he did not make this character up.

The harder part was the folding table and cooler. Both required me to be upright while putting forth effort. The table had to be cleared off and wiped down. The cooler required locating and filling.

Does it make me a bad person if I momentarily just wanted to sweep everything off the table onto the floor?

Then they had to be drug down the street. Not sure why I felt the need to carry the table by hand rather than using a dolly. Also not clear why my daughter danced along next to me the whole way instead of helping me carry it. Such are the mysteries of motherhood.


No dogs were harmed in the staging of this photo of Katniss Everdeen and her bow and arrow. 

 And we hadn’t even trick or treated yet. Or gotten anyone dressed and out the door. Sheesh.

Iron Patriot and Katniss flexing their muscles for no apparent reason.

My daughter had friends coming over to trick or treat with us. My son was ready to leave an hour early. I successfully made small talk with other parents and stayed upright for a two full hours. I’m counting it as a win. Especially because my evening wasn’t over. Next up, drag all the crap back down the block to our house. Drop daughter at sleepover. Eat candy and cuddle the only baby left in the house for the night.

By 9:30 I raised the white flag and laid my head down on my pillow. I told my 8 year old son to turn off the television and go to bed at 10:00. I don’t know that he’s particularly trustworthy to accomplish that, but the cooties convinced me I didn’t care and his sugar high appeared to be wearing off. He took “turn off the television and go to bed” as turn out the television and go to sleep right there in bed next to me. I know this because his cold feet were pressed up on my thighs right around 3 am. Around 5 am he flopped over and began breathing on my right eye.

That morning, we got up and had breakfast together. Nothing special. Just the usual. I had two sinks overflowing with dishes, the kitchen floor was a mess, the trash needed to be taken out, the fridge needed to be cleaned out, grocery shopping needed to be done and we had volleyball, soccer and dance looming ahead on the schedule for the day. But my eight year old had had a fun night the night before, eaten his fill of candy, slept in Daddy’s spot in our bed and he was loving life as the only baby in the house. Plus he got to love life as the only baby in the house while sorting and counting Halloween candy. He radiated happiness and contentment. He rambled on uninterrupted telling me his every thought. 

And all my troubles fell away in that moment. And life was bright and shiny and sweet. It’s November and a good time to be thankful. So it was nice to have a moment that brought me back to feeling thankful. Because I am. For him and each day with him and her and their father. Even if their father is far away and can’t wash dishes for me right now.
So I sat myself down next to him and let the dishes wait a little while.

And the universe repaid me by giving me a great day followed by another great day. We watched Galaxy Quest and laughed. We went grocery shopping and they actually retrieved items we needed from aisles on the other side of the store. Yes, a case of Propel appeared in my cart. Yes, so did a roll of Gum Tape. But no one freaked the hell out or thought about killing anyone. And at one point my sweet babies even tried to convince me I look like I’m in my 20s.

Love notes from my babies.   They either love me or plan to hit me up for an X Box tonight.

My glass is officially half full.

Things the Clampetts Did While Traveling

We were at home for Christmas and then traveled for 8 days around New Years. We visited family. We built a snowman and went sledding. And we came home ready for a vacation to recover from our vacation. There’s something about sleeping in a bed that is not my own and having to rummage around in my suitcase for everything that seems to exhausts me.

The presence of my children 24/7 up in my face might factor in as well. They exhaust me but it’s always sort of lovely the way you get back and because we’re so used to being crammed together 24/7 while traveling you find yourselves cramming into the same areas at home to stay that way. And then when they finally stop doing it, you miss them and wonder where they are.

You might think 3 hours on a plane and 4 hours crammed in a car together would be enough cuddle time but you would be wrong. Attached at the hip. Entire trip.  Endlessly sweet. Sigh. 

Things we did on our trip:

1. Let our 8 year old travel to the cold frozen northeast with no socks on. I discovered this downside of letting your kid dress himself while riding the airport shuttle bus.  When I was having trouble getting a good look, he decided to do me a solid and stand barefoot on the seat of the airport shuttle bus.  Yep.  Those are definitely some bare feet.

 

2. Pig piled the 10 year old on the bus. Because what’s a pig pile once your kid has stood barefoot on an airport shuttle bus?  Pig piles are Clampett code for everyone stack yourselves on top of one person right up until the moment it becomes clear they're going to flip their lip. Then and only then do you agree to get off.

 

3. Laid on the hard floor at the car rental place while waiting for a car. Nothing says classy like immediately just parking your suitcases in a corner and sitting down next to them. In our defense, we left for the airport at 4 am. There are no circumstances under which I want to be awake and face to face with my 8 year old at 4 am.  But when the lure of cheap plane tickets for flights leaving at the crack of dawn force your into that situation, it's officially okay for everyone to lay on the floor in Hertz.

Proof that her My Little Pony Rainbow Dash made the trip with us.

Proof that I'm not too good to lay on the floor either. 

4. Let our kid go without washing her hair for 5 days. My daughter’s hair was in a braid that got progressively more funky. Didn’t bother her a bit. Bothered me slightly. But if you make an effort, you’d be surprised how easy it is to just not look at it. And if you don’t look at it, it’s like it doesn’t exist! Perfect!

 

5. Won big at Dave & Buster’s. 4000 tickets. Literally. My daughter was on fire hitting the button on various games winning 400 tickets at a time. I should have had that kid pick some Lottery numbers that night.

 

6. Took our 10 year old’s mad hula hooping skills to a new state. Her brother kept adding more hoops doing 3 or 4 at a time. Naturally she needed to show him up rocking 5 at once.

 

7. Sent my husband outside in 10 degree weather in a swimsuit. We went to an indoor waterpark type place that included a heated pool and hot tub outside. It was neat soaking in the hot tub while it literally snowed on our heads.  We also enjoyed that the lifeguard manning the outdoor parts was bundled up from head to toe.

Technically, I only sent my husband for the photo op but a certain little someone loves to do anything his crazy father is doing.  So 2 for the price of one.

We couldn’t decide if the bundled up lifeguard jumps directly in if someone’s drowning or if they’d stop to take the snow boots off at least. I feel like I'd take the shoes off for sure but roll with everything else.  My husband’s theory was that they must double check carefully that the person really is in fact drowning before leaping in. How annoying would it be if the person wasn’t really drowning and now all your clothes are wet?

8. Utilized the snow to keep my Dr. Pepper nice and cold. I was mid Pepper on the way sledding so my daughter and I fashioned a snow koozie on the hood of the car for my can until we got back. Naturally, she then orchestrated getting herself in the picture with the koozie.

Then we sledded as we have never sledded before. Which mostly means we sledded without anyone getting injured.  We also shoved the kids in the snow and told them to get their snow angel on. My husband was a little too enthusiastic pushing me backwards so I could make one but it’s all good.

First ones to hill for sledding!

9. Chucked deuces in the CVS while wearing a pig hat. I said, oh look at the hats. She said, oh, let me look cray.

 

10.  Chucked deuces in the snow.  I'm beginning to see a trend here.

 

11. Did Miley Cyrus impressions in the snow.

 

And, lo, it was a fun trip. Especially getting to visit family.  But spending time with my kids ain't so bad either.

The Clampetts went camping

I fell back into the Breaking Bad well last week. I blame this on mistakenly thinking season 5 only had 8 episodes which seemed like a breeze to get through.  I blame that mistake on Netflix for not making it clear that there were 2 parts to Season 5.  And I blame that madness on the crazy Breaking Bad people because what the hell is 2 parts of 1 season.  That's 2 seasons, bro.  Part 1 even ended with an exciting cliffhanger. Seriously. That’s called a season finale. The next episode is a new season not part 2. Whatev.

I managed to tear myself away from Breaking Bad long enough to agree to go on a family camp out with my 7 year old’s new Cub Scout pack.

2 nights. Tent. Cold. And I wore a headlamp to dinner. I got tired of taking it off and on so at one point I just kind of pushed it back like a headband and wore it while chatting with other grown adults. What has become of me. 

The 7 year old was in heaven the entire time. This is a kid that wanted to be in Cub Scouts last year and his mother somehow dodged it while her husband was traveling extensively last year. This year there was no dodging. Not for lack of trying. But because that kid was hell bent on Cub Scouts. He brought me the flyer. He chatted me up repeatedly. He willingly offered to give up every other activity he holds near and dear in exchange for joining Cub Scouts. But the icing on the cake was that the kid that never knows the date and time of anything and would forget his head if it wasn’t screwed on committed the first meeting to memory and reminded me every day for the week leading up to it. Only a scum bag would blow him off. So we didn’t.

One person in this photo is excited heading off on a camping adventure.  One person in this photo can't believe she's stuck sitting next to her brother for 2 hours. 

So far it mostly resembles herding cats. And so far I’m mostly just thankful I’m not in charge of the herding. But my son loves it. Like big puffy heart loves it. This proves useful when he wants to behave like a jerk during piano lessons. A couple threats about returning his brand new Cub Scout uniform to the store and all was right in the world again.

Camping was new territory for us though. Our kids have only ever camped in a tent in the living room. Taking our tent outside was a big step. Taking our tent outside 2 hours from our house was an even bigger step.

Plus I’m not much of an outdoorsy girl. I enjoy sleeping on a mattress that doesn’t blow up, changing clothes regularly and central heat and air. For that matter, I like being able to get up to go to the bathroom at 3 am without it being a whole event. I drink a lot of water. I’m going to have to go. It shouldn’t require a headlamp, a coat, flip flops and wandering half asleep through the night hoping no other grown adults see me like that. I would also like it noted that there is no quiet way to get out of a tent with 4 people in it. Just sayin. Also sayin car alarms going off at 6 am are a complete party foul.

 

But the trip was fun. It’s mostly fun now that I reflect back on it 3 days later. Mid camping trip I was mostly sleep deprived and hoping to make it through dinner without going full crab cake on anyone. But my son was in heaven and that makes it exponentially more fun to reflect back on.

He was looking at animal tracks. He was picking out a walking stick and helping to smooth it down. And he wore the same clothes for two days. He tried wearing them for three days but managed to submerge the lower half of his body in water while walking by the lake. My husband tried to tell me he could just wear them wet despite the fact that the sun was going down soon. I tried to tell him I wasn’t ready to go full Clampett and that we packed extra pants for a reason. Deploy the new pants and be done with it.

Too bad someone let the world’s spaciest 2nd grader pack for himself. I’m not saying you can’t let a 2nd grader pack. I’m just saying you should maybe spot check his choices. Because if you don’t he may choose capris with a hole in the knee when the temperatures are going to be in the 40s. My husband suggested rolling the hem of the capris up a little so they looked less high water. I guess he was thinking someone would confuse our kid with Huck Finn. He mostly looked insane and they unrolled eventually anyway. I suggested we just embrace the crazy. Can’t be any worse than his mother wearing the head lamp to dinner anyway.

I'd subject the interwebs to photos of the camping shenanigans except my trusty iPhone battery died 3 minutes after I got out of the car.  So for everyone keeping score at home, I was wearing a head lamp, sleeping on the ground, sleep deprived and cut of from civilization.   On the downside, I had a lot of photos to scroll through on Instagram.  On the upside, it's not half bad unplugging for 3 days and reminding yourself of the important things in life.

I die.

Someday when that little 2nd grader is a grown adult and tries to tell me I never did anything for him, I will tote out this camping trip as an example of just how wrong he is. This female ain’t sleeping with her face shoved into the side of a tent for her health. I got sucked into the vortex of cute that is an excited little Cub Scout in his new uniform. Sigh.

Team Cray

In my never ending quest to find fun and active things to do with our kids, I’d been looking for a Fun Run of some sort to sign us all up for.   I’d decided running a whole 5K might be a little much for my gang.  

We’ve walked them before.  And everyone lived to tell the tale.  We’ve done one 2 years in a row now on Thanksgiving morning and the excitement in the air is fun for everyone.  

We also tried one that involved food tastings every half mile.  Not gonna lie.  I’d probably throw up if I ate a mini burrito while attempting to run a 5K.  But while strolling with my children, it wasn’t half bad. 

They had giant strawberries, some lemonade and a sopapilla.  They also had giant chocolate chip cookies.  And who in their right mind doesn't enjoy a giant chocolate chip cookie.  Some lady brought her dog to walk with her.  I’d like it noted that I am not a rocket scientist but even I can figure out that my dog should not come to a food related 5K because he’s going to want to try to eat all the food everyone drops along the way.  And I'm not just saying that because my dog is Honey Wheat.

So anyway, we mostly walked and ate and I'm pretty okay with both of those activities.  Then the wrecking crew started throwing glasses of water at each other creating a full on spectacle at the water stations and we fist pumped across the finish line.  All in a day's work.

Soaked shirts.  And I don't mean sweat.

Several months later and we decided to try a scavenger hunt type race through Challenge Nation.  They give you a list of 12 clues and you go locate 11 of them and take your team’s picture with whatever the answer is.  They check your photos at the finish line. 

My daughter once won the overall medal at field day at her school for hula hooping.   That kid got every drop of the hula hooping talent in our family.  The rest of us were winging it.  No one more so than the Italian Stallion trying to hula hoop with his neck.

You go roughly the distance of a 5K in tracking the stuff down.  Some are landmarks in the vicinity and some are just random stuff to find.  Like one said to find an old school blue mailbox and you’d be amazed how many of those there aren’t.  Another said to look for someone wearing an article of clothing from a different state but the clothing couldn’t be for a sports team. 

Rocking out.

My husband and I did most of the work on the operation and we didn’t do half bad finishing in the top 50 out of over 200.  And we didn’t run any of it.  We decided before even getting there that it wasn't about running or winning so we'd just walk and enjoy the afternoon together.  My husband is Magellan and knew where some stuff was without looking at a map.  We also followed a few crowds of people charging off for the next location.  

Bright orange and on the move.

I’d say my husband was the All Star on our team except he successfully left his brand spanking new iPhone 5C in a store while we were looking for a post card (part of the scavenger hunt).   He didn't realize his mistake until we were 5 blocks away.  I ran the five blocks back to get it while he fed our dead weight offspring a snack and hosed them down.  They were sucking down Slurpees by the time I got back.  They also found time to toss my snack in a trashcan because it was taking up too much space in the backpack.   Naturally, none of their snacks were cramping anyone's style so we still had Funyuns to look forward to on the car ride home. 

That's "Team Cray" as in Team Cray-Cray.  As in Insane in the Membrane.

If we do the race again next year, I’d give my daughter one of the clue sheets and let her be in charge of reading them to us and checking them off as we go.   I’d also put my son in charge of something.  I’d pretend I’d let him hold my phone and be in charge of getting the camera ready to take our picture but I’d like my phone in one piece and not lost three blocks away when it’s time to take a picture.  I’ll think of something for him though.

But it was fun. The kids liked wearing matching handicrafted bright orange shirts.  My husband liked knowing which direction we needed to go.  And I liked that we that we represented at the finish line straight up gangster.  Cuz that’s how we roll, yo.

Crowd Pleasers

The traveling circus that is my household hit up a local carnival recently. I’d pretend it was hell except it was actually a lot of fun. 

My daughter hung out with a friend instead of us. That’s cool. We didn’t want to be seen with her anyway.

She probably would have been more inclined to hang out with us if I hadn’t given her $20. My husband seemed to think that was a complete Daddy Warbucks move.  Inside his head, it’s 1972 and she shouldn’t have been given more than $2. He seemed confused when I pointed out that one carnival ride costs $3.

The Italian Stallion videotaping his ride with his phone.  Just asking for that phone to fly out of his hands, too, I might add. 

Our son did not have the good fortune of ditching us for a friend. He was stuck sandwiched between us on several rides. We were stuck having our necks thrown out of whack by the crappy shocks on the carnival rides.

But it was fun. I Tilt-A-Whirl’d the hell out of two small children and even the carnie ride operator complimented me on the way out. Either that or he was mackin’ on my fineness. I was wearing my fugly visor though so odds are it was my above average tilting skills. But I’ll take the compliment.

A photo of a pole, my son's hands but no face and some random kid that rode with us.  I gave my husband my phone to take a picture. .  Guess I should have specified that I'd like to be able to see my face in the photo. 

We were well on our way to being done at the carnival and ready for a heavy dose of hand sanitizer but  then my husband spotted our daughter and her friend with a fresh funnel cake in hand. He offered to hold it while they used their last tickets on another ride. And then we got to wait in line to buy another funnel cake to replace theirs.  It mysteriously ended up getting inhaled by two clowns. 

One second the Italian Stallion and his little mini me are conducting a quality control taste test to be sure the funnel cake's not poisoned.  That's standard operating procedure in our house.  But I look away for a second to watch my daughter laughing away on the swinging chairs and next thing I know there's a powered sugar explosion on the front of my husband's shirt and he's asking how much the funnel cakes cost. 

As soon as I got my cell phone out to photograph the sugar explosion, my husband had his little minion brush the sugar off his chest while he brushed off his face.   Too bad grease doesn't brush off as easily.

The most amusing part of the carnival was getting home. My daughter came with her friend but left with us. Except we rode our bikes there. So there were 4 people and 3 bikes. Being the geniuses that we are, we sent the strongest bike rider off into the sunset for reinforcement. Two bikes and one adult stayed with the kids and we started walking towards home.

We didn’t really discuss the plan when the strongest bike rider left but I guess I thought him getting reinforcement was going to mean an SUV we could toss the bikes in. He thought it meant our family sedan. My son hopped right in and left me and his sister for dead with two bikes. One of which was his bike I might add. Chivalry is clearly dead.  I know because my husband and son drove over it leaving two ladies behind to huff it home.

Attempting to win a giant stuffed animal.  I don't even remember what kind of stuffed animal but I don't have any problem remembering we dropped $5 on the attempt.

Two weeks later we hit another little carnival my dad's work was putting on.  We inhaled more high fructose corn syrup and employed plenty of hand sanitizer.  The highlight of that one was the dunk tank. My kids didn’t even know the people inside the dunk tank but that didn't seem to matter. 

It was free and it never lost its humor when the guy fell in.  The line was consistently 10 kids deep.   My trainwreck of a 7 year old was on a role repeatedly going 3 for 3 dunking people. He hit a dry spell later and couldn’t hit the broad side of a barn. So naturally, he walked up and just pushed the button. Didn’t even run or try to pretend he wasn’t headed that way. Just sort of strolled up and pushed the button.

That kid’s a crowd pleaser.

Feeling the Rain

It rained recently where we live. Lots and lots of rain coming down. Lovely to curl up in bed and hear it pattering gently on the window. And lovely, apparently, to let your children play in without a care in the world.

That's straight out of Chapter 12 in the Clampett's for Life book of parenting. We live by it. So naturally those were our children in the alley behind our house splashing in the river.

 

We also discovered there was a lake at the end of the alley so we checked that out too. Exploring. That's another chapter in the book.

Although I went a little paranoid helicopter mom and decided we should explore with our flip flops on because this is random water in the street and it was starting to creep me out a little.  Rain is clean and rejuvenating.  Pooling water on your street is distinctly brown and more gag inducing if you think about it too much.  Flip flops it is.

But it's fun. A special kind of fun as they realize the whole activity is to just play in the rain.

This is a nut that knows how to embrace life.  Dirt, rain, tears, whatever.  Arms wide ready for it.  He will be a regular at the local emergency room but, man, is that kid going to have stories to tell.

Kids get so used to hustling to get out of the rain. They're so used to trying to stay dry. Watching them quietly settle into getting wet and embracing the rain as part of the fun is the stuff childhood is made off.  When I was a kid, I loved going out in the rain. Twirling, walking, running. Umbrella. No umbrella.

The world is such a quiet simple place when it's raining.  Less cars on the street.  Less neighbors out walking their dogs. I like that my kids had the benefit of each other out there in the rain with them. Life is more fun when there's someone to splash. Just ask my husband.

He gave the water a few splashes strictly for quality control purposes.  To be sure the splash quality was up to to snuff.   Naturally.

A good 30 minutes later and 2 dripping kids and we called it a day.   Not before a quick canonball contest in the pool on the way in though.  Because you're already wet and so what if the pool is freezing cold?  If you jump in, you won't even have time to worry about it.

It's funny how you can head home after a long day at the office with one idea of what your evening has in store for you.  And then life just steps in and takes your evening in a different direction.  A good kind of different direction.  Sweet and simple and laughing together.

Posing like pirates.  In the rain.  Don't the two go hand in hand?

Theses are the good days.    We'll pretend no one wept and pouted because the fun should never ever have to end regardless of what time it is and whether or not anyone has eaten dinner.  We'll also pretend that no one bickered with their brother over the toothpaste, her spot on the bed and the pee on the toilet seat. 

Good days aren't good because no one bickers.  Not to me anyway.  To me, good days are good because the joy and fun make the bickering just part of the noisy nonsense.  Good days make it easy to ignore the noisy nonsense and not let it ramp your stress level sky high.  I like to think of it as flying over the tree tops with the noise below me.  Because my house is hella noisy and chaotic.  Even on good days.   It's just about the good outweighing the noise and chaos.  It's fun when it does.  And this time it did.

Moist and hiking in flip flops

We like to try out new activities we can do together as a family that involve getting some fresh air and exercise. Bike riding has been one of our recent favorites during the 100 degree sauna of summer. Mostly because you at least get a breeze if you ride fast. 

A couple weeks ago, when the weather decided to be less sauna-ish for the day, we decided to try out geocaching. It's basically a treasure hunt using GPS minus the actual "treasure."  On paper, I was thinking we could walk to the hidden caches. I'm pretty sure I had visions of hiking, a picnic lunch and pretending to be rugged and outdoorsy. We're not. We're also lazy. So we rode our bikes instead. We also sort of forgot that the reason it felt less sauna-ish was because it was raining.

Yup. We geocached in the rain. Pretty sure we looked like idiots. Pretty sure it's not the first time and won't be the last. We're not made of sugar. And it was a light sprinkle anyway. So whatever.

My brother joined us. The crazy gene must run in the family because dude didn't even balk when we headed out. He just started pedaling.

On the brightside, the rain kept it nice and cool.  On the downside, the bike tires sent water flying up our backs.  We all had wet backs.   No need to worry though.  There was no one else hanging out in the park in the rain to see the strange wet spots on our backs.

First up was a tree not far from our house. We're pretty convinced it's up there. Up there eluding us even after I convinced my husband to climb the tree in flip flops. Twice. What's that? Why did we wear flip flops to geocache? I would think the answer to that is obvious. Because we're the ding dongs geocaching in the rain and had no plan.  Duh.

I wish I had a photo of the 5 of us staring up into that tree. I also wish I had video of our lengthy discussion while staring up into that tree. My husband immediately concluded it's not there anymore and someone must have moved it.  No other possible explanation.  My son wanted his father to plow ahead with a death wish and keep climbing up higher. My daughter wanted to point out that she was getting wet. I said maybe we could wait until the leaves fall and then we'd be able to see better. And my brother wanted to know some crap about how many satellites the phone navigating us to the cache was connected to. Chaos.

We finally broke free of the gravitational pull of the tree and headed to a big park near our house. We started in the parking lot.

The clue mentioned light so naturally we circled like 15 light posts before we realized that the extra hint "skirt" meant that we should life the little bottom park of the pole.

I'm 39 years old and I'm here to tell you I never knew any of the parts on light posts move. Well. They do. And apparently they are riddled with geocaches. Who knew? Once we mastered that trick we successfully tracked down 4 others. It was almost too easy. We lost interest and officially retired from light post geocaching.

So we moved on to full on outdoorsy. The clue made no sense to us but we followed the GPS onto a little footpath through a wooded area in the park. We could tell from the hints it wasn't up in a tree though. That was important because we're also officially retired from "up in the tree" geocaching.

At this point we're moist, off roading in a small forest in flip flops and wandering in circles because the GPS location was give or take 15 feet.  Off the beaten track in the forest and my son naturally decides he needs to use the bathroom. He was trying to convince me to take him. I was trying to explain to him that he pees in our backyard just to annoy me while simultaneously entertaining his father but suddenly by ourselves in the forest he needs me to walk him a mile to the park restroom. I won the debate. We'll leave it at that.

Did I mention we left our bike helmets on while wandering in a our flip flops?  Safety first!

It quickly became apparent that this one was somewhere in the ground and that the ground was covered with leaves. But none of the delicate flowers in our crew wanted to touch the leaves to move them. That includes with their hand or flip flop feet.  So there was a lot of shoving piles of stuff with sticks.

My favorite was when we thought we'd found a new area to check sure that we'd finally found the right spot. Except it wasn't a new area because we were going in a circle and everything looked the same. We did that like 4 times and it never got old.  I also called my husband on his phone at one point when we lost sight of him in the forest. Pretty sure there's nothing roughing it outdoorsy about that.

What's a girl got to do to get decent shot of the forest chaos?  Would it kill people to pretend their normal and just smile?

Just as we were giving up and debating what flavor Sonic milkshakes to reward ourselves with, we start walking back to our bikes and something on the ground looked smooth and slightly shiny.

And that was it. Boom. We are geocache rock stars. Other than the one in the tree that shall not be named.

If you wear a camouflage hat, you are officially in charge of sticking your hand in the hole to pull the box out.

We headed out for some victory FroYo to celebrate. We'd earned it. Next time we're in the mood for more Fro Yo, we'll probably try earning some more. Although maybe minus the rain. Or not. It was a fun way to burn a some daylight as a family.

Post FroYo sugar rush.  Dry but still just as crazy.