Mother's Day

I hope everyone had a relaxing Mother's Day! I got to sleep in, while Husband tended to the kids and washed the leftover dishes. Then I was made a very nice breakfast of French Toast. We spent the morning at church and then came back for lunch where we had grilled sandwiches. While the younger girls were napping, Husband took Einey to the grocery store and I got to relax on my deck swing in the sun. I think I slept for most of the hour and a half they were gone (or at least quiet). I didn't even have to help put the dishes away!

After lunch, we took the girls to one of our favorite local playgrounds to do some Letterboxing. This is our new favorite family activity! If you follow the above link, you can find clues for hundreds of letterboxes. Inside the letterbox, you will find a logbook, stamp and generally ink and a pen. You need to bring your own stamp and logbook as well. When you find a box, you stamp their logbook with your stamp and use their stamp to stamp your book. The girls really enjoy looking for the each clue and finding the boxes. We usually write the date, stamp name and location in our books so we know where we've been.

Prince Hill Park

We went searching for five boxes on Mother's Day. We found all five and a Hitch-hiker stamp. This is a stamp that if you find, you take it with you and drop it in another box. This one hails from Washington State via Texas. We haven't decided where we are going to drop it yet. We need to go back and find one more box. The last box gave hints for a bonus box, but sadly, we didn't know exactly what a poplar tree looked like and it was getting late. So it's going to be back to the park in search of a poplar tree one day.


This was our second time letterboxing. The first was about a month ago and we found all four boxes on that trip.

The fun thing is, both places we looked were local playgrounds where we spend hundreds of hours a year. They weren't in the playground area, but the one's we found on Mother's Day, we must have walked past hundreds of times! We were just never looking! The first time, we found trails we didn't even know existed!


All in all, Letterboxing is a great way to spend time exploring the great outdoors. It is also a great learning activity for kids. They need to count paces, read a compass (on some), identify types of plants and learn to appreciate nature. Plus deciphering some clues is pretty difficult as well!

That's how I spent Mother's Day. How was yours?