Where The Wild Things Are

At some point last summer, after we attended our first letterboxing gathering, we knew we wanted to host our own. We enlisted the help of a few friends and started planning. By December, we nailed down a location and set the official wheels in motion. We planned, we carved, we asked for other carvers, and we waited. Finally, the first week of June arrived and we set out to plant. The husband, a friend, Moe, her buddy and I set forth to get things planted. After all, what sort of letterboxing event would it be if there were no boxes to find???? These two little guys were great - they didn't complain (much) and we were able to zip through planting the first series. Then we parted ways and dragged Moe onto the second series. All told - she did about 4 miles with us that day without much complaints. Maybe the key to hiking is NOT taking ALL the kids :P

We wrote up the clues and watched the weather. As of the beginning of the week, it was NOT in our favor. But by the end of the week, it looked like it would be a decent day.

Sunday (the 13th) dawned and we packed up the car and headed off. After minimal setting up, we waited. Before long, the first attendees arrived and the fun began. The kids played, making new friends and visiting with old friends. We had over 120 people attend (!) - from as far away as Maine (now that's dedication). We met new people and saw people that we hadn't seen in awhile. We were finally able to put faces to trail names. There was laughter and fun. We ate, we exchanged and some of us hit the trails. The weather held out - it was mostly cloudy and overcast, but it was comfortable. The day sped by and before we knew it, it was time to pack up and go. Overall, the day was a smashing success!

The first question the next day was: when can we do that again?

Next up on the agenda - the Husband is planning a 15 mile hiking session - date to be determined in the near future!

Little Rhody

My Husband has officially quit Rhode Island. (we'll see how long that lasts).

Over the weekend, we took, what should have been a 15 - 20 minute trip away to search for letterboxes. Only, an hour + later and we never reached our destination. We headed out down Route 6 from our home. Easy as pie. Took a left onto Cucumber Hill Road and then it went downhill from there. We turned left onto Moosup Valley Road (as instructed) and was on the lookout for Rt. 14 to take to Waterman Road. Only Moosup Valley Road turned into Rt. 14 with no signs. From there, we were searching for 102. We ended up driving across Rt. 102 as it wasn't marked as 102 from our direction. We turned around and from the East we see a BIG sign - junction 14 and 102 (would have been nice driving from the West). Okay, back on track. Let's look for Flat River Road. Oh hey, see 117 there, that's Flat River Road, let's turn around again. Okay, getting close, we just need to find Philips Hill Road, it's right off Rt. 117. Drive down the road, nothing. Turn around and drive back. Nothing. Lots of little roads that are marked on the opposite sides of the roads with the tiniest road signs ever. And driveways with road signs on them. Yeah for the smallest state, there are plenty of signs. Just not where they should be. We finally, after driving back and forth, give up and head back to CT to letterbox. We looked at google again when we got home. Turns out they omitted that Philips Hill road doesn't go all the way to 117. About 1/10 of a mile is actually Hill Farm Road. Would have been nice to know that before we drove around for so long.

Sadly, that's not the first time we've come across that in Rhode Island. The roads are usually poorly marked (in spots, the signs are after the turn off). SO yeah, not a productive day.

Sadly, we didn't find and letterboxes we looked for that day. And to top it off, we walked right by where one should have been (the clue was in our backpack - it wasn't one we set out to find). Oh well, there's always tomorrow. Of the next day. Only not in Rhode Island.

Summer Fun - the low cost way!

Living in the state of "were going to keep raising gas prices and you can't do anything about it and oh you blinked, here's another $0.15cents - hahaha- fools" means more people are staying closer to home this summer and looking for low cost summer activities. Husband on the other hand, has finally gotten bitten by the travel bug (go figure!). So here are a few low cost ideas to get you through the summer.

Local Library - Our local library has a variety of summer programs, in addition to the summer reading programs. There are preschool story times (which I may take advantage of), craft days (which I've signed Eieny and Meenie up for. Hello Mommy and Moe morning coffee time! We've missed you!) and girl scout craft days - which you neither have to be a girl or a scout to attend. Only Einey meets the age limit though.

Swimming - We have several local lakes to swim at during the summer. Many are free, and aren't to far of a drive. We've brought the beach pass for the closest one though. not only is it real close, but it's also less crowded and is the only one which employs life guards.

Playground - When you have a brand new super cool fun for hours playground in town, what's not to like? The kids spend hours running around playing, can make themselves go on swings themselves now and love seeing which friends will be there that day. Call a friend to meet you there and it's an added bonus. The kids can play, the moms can sit in the shade of a tree and talk, all the while keeping an eye on the kids of course! Pack a lunch or a snack and water bottles to prolong the visit and get the most out of it. An extra special treat is after playing hard all morning - kids who don't nap may actually fall asleep in the afternoon!

Hiking - We've combined hiking with letterboxing (click the link below the post for more information) for endless summer fun! You can find our stamps all the way out to the Cape! The kids enjoy it, we enjoy hiking and it's easy to do. You can choose how long you want to be out in the woods. It's fun, cheap and educational! Just make sure you bring proper equipment - letterboxing stuff if your letterboxing, water bottles, insect repellent, sunscreen, and snacks like granola bars. Our hiking bag (always packed and ready for a moments notice) also has helmet lights (for looking into hard to see places and or course, if you get lost, a compass, and a whistle. We also always carry a cell phone at all times. You just never know!

Pick your own - This morning ,we took the girls to pick strawberries. We got just over 3 pounds for under $4.00! The kids had fun (unlike the last time we went to the crazy lady's farm). We definitely plan on going back - for more strawberries as well as Blueberries (which are ready from mid July through September!0. I even plan on freezing some so that the girls can have fresh blueberries in the dead of winter.

Summer Rec. offerings - Each year, our rec. department has a theme day. Two years ago - it was pirate day. Last year (and this year as well - due to part of the day being rained out last year) is cowboy day. They encourage the kids to dress up, send them on a scavenger hunt and give out prizes. Plus there are skits to watch, food to eat and games to play. All in all, it's a fun, cheap day!

Summer music series - Another activity we like is the evening summer music nights. Some nights are kids themed, others are not - but it's still fun to take them to Jazz night, or Celtic night. And nearby, they do river fire (not as big as Providence, but close by and the kids loved it)!. So I'm writing down dates now for local concert nights. It's always fun to pack a lunch and a blanket and let the kids enjoy themselves!

Throw a party! - Last year I threw a water party. I set up the sprinkler, put out trays of bubbles and huge buckets of water. There were relay races, there were water fights. We even dug for treasure from ice cubes! This years plans include a color party - tye-dying fun! - and an afternoon kids tea party. Eieny is planning her own pizza party. Unfortunately the date she picked, her best friends are both out of the state on vacation. Luckily, summer has just began!

Family Time

We spend alot of time as a family. So much that I sometimes run out of ideas of things to do.

Some of our favorite things to do are spending time outdoors. Our favorite new family activity is letterboxing. I can't blog enough about letterboxing. It basically combines hiking with treasure hunting. You get clues from letterboxing.org and then try to find a box that is hidden in the woods. Inside the box is usually a log-book and a stamp. You stamp your book with their stamp and their stamp with your stamp that you carry. You should bring in a bag a logbook, clues, a stamp, stamp pad, pen trail snacks (you'll never know when you are going to be stuck in the woods for five hours), bottled water and a compass. We've been doing this since our girls were 2.5 to 5.5 years old. And amazing, while they may complain for normal everyday walking that they are too tired, they never complain about being out in the woods.

In addition to (as my pediatrician says) teaching them great lifestyle habits (as hiking is a great physical activity) they are learning all sorts of things about science. Nature wise, we have seen red-tailed hawks, frogs, toads, deer, chip monks, red squirrels, salamanders, great blue herrings, and woodchucks. The girls are learning how to read a compass, what to do if lost in the woods (we always carry a cell phone, but need to pack a whistle) - such as following a river downstream to a road/body of water, how to find adequate shelter if needed - what plants are safe to at and also which should be avoided.

But most of all, we all enjoy spending time together as a family. For more of our letterboxing stories, click the letterboxing tag at the bottom of this post.

**********************************

What are your favorite family activities and how do you find the quality family time?
And if you don’t have quality family time, how do you make up for it? What challenges do you face?

Write and post today by midnight and you will automatically be entered to win a Wii game system and/or "Boggie," a new video game where you get up and move. Or as the girls say "shake your booty, shake your booty..."

This post is brought to you in conjunction with Parent Bloggers Network & EA’s Wii-Boogie, a family gaming experience. Shake it. Sing it. Create it.

Salty Water

Why do sharks only swim in salt water?
Because pepper water makes them sneeze.

This is the jokes repeated by Einey and Meenie on our drive out to the Cape the other day. Moe on the other hand kept saying "not going in the salty water, sharks". Even though we tried to reassure her that there were no sharks waiting in Boston Harbor to eat her, she was still afraid. Add that to the tiny waves that were breaking near the shore and she was a tad leery of the water. After she got used to being there though, she entered the water ever so slightly.


We took the advice of a friend and headed out to Sandwich for the day. We wanted something that wasn't "touristy", and loaded with the summer crowds. A place where we could watch the kids and not have to worry about them running into a road or losing them on the beach. We couldn't go to the beach she recommended as it was a resident only beach, so we hit one of the public beaches instead. It was a tad too rocky for my liking, but the girls had fun. We watched crabs scurrying in the salt marsh, fish swimming around and cormorants diving for food.


The kids enjoyed walking on the Sandwich Boardwalk. Einey found a plank that had her and her dads' name on it (it was one of those memorial type deals where people purchased planks). We ate at a small seafood place where the girls had a shrimp popcorn meal, grilled cheese and fish nuggets. After lunch, we went over near the Cape Cod Canal and found a letterbox while walking along the trail there. We brought clues for a few, but only sought out that one. The weather started out iffy. It was supposed to be sunny and warm. When we got out to Sandwich, if was very overcast and had started to spit. By the time we got to the beach though, the sun started breaking through the clouds and warming things up.


It was a short but sweet stay. Next year, we rent a house for the week! While the drive is only 1.5 hours, it still tends to be a long day and limits what we can visit.

Day trips

In addition to letterboxing, while Husband was on vacation the last two weeks, we shipped the girls off to VBS each morning for one week and they started swim lessons the next week.

We took two day trips, one to a semi-local zoo and the other to the aquarium.

The zoo is one I went to all the time when I was growing up. I have very fond memories and hope that the girls will too. They have (in the past few years) added a HUGE chimp exhibit, a large area for their big cats (Lions and Tigers and opening very soon - the African Panther) and added a mandrill exhibit. Husband chased the male mandrill around the perimeter of the cage trying to get a picture, that he started to snarl and bare his teeth at him. I remember growing up, the big cats were in very small cages in the center of the zoo. It wasn't fun to see them that way (yes I know, animals shouldn't be in cages). And of course, they still have the "Big Red Bat" which the girls get a kick out of, just like I did when I was a kid! The day we went, it was raining off and on all day. It worked out well as the majority of the zoo is tree lined so the tree canopy kept us dry. The nice thing about this zoo is it is in the middle of nowhere. It's a nice easy drive!

And bonus, there is a letterbox here which became our first out of state stamp!





The aquarium is the one we go to all the time. We actually brought their membership and can now go whenever we want. They just opened their "birds of the outback" exhibit where you can walk through and feed the birds. They weren't very hungry though because they have so many people feeding them all day long.

How to spend five hours....

Goodwin Forest State Park

Earlier this week, we decided to take a small hike after swimming lessons. It was around 11:30 am so we grabbed some snacks, water, and our letterboxing bag and hit the road (notice I didn't say lunch because after all it was supposed to be a small hike). We sprayed ourselves down with Deep Woods Off (we've learned our lesson)! and off we were with our trail map in hand.


After getting off to a rough start, we couldn't find our first box, but did find a box with no clues to it, we were on our way. We ended up wandering around, following clues and having fun. We ate our snacks slowly and really weren't too hungry even without lunch. The girls attempted to pee in the woods. Einey had no problem, but Meenie made a mess. Not fun! Little girls and squatting in the woods is not good!



We really urged the girls to use their five senses. We encouraged them to smell the wildflowers, talked about how different it smelled than by the lake, or in the middle of the pine forest. We discussed how the forest changed as we walked, from overgrown fields to pine forests to cedar groves to a marshy causeway. We listened to deer in the forest, birds singing and trees creaking (I thought one was about to fall!). We watched a deer leap through the forest over a stone wall and into a field. We saw old stone foundations and an equally old dam. We saw butterflies and birds in abundance. We spied another deer on the edge of a stonewall. We watched chipmunks scamper and a great blue heron soar across the lake. We looked for frogs and turtles by the pond. We looked for beavers by the beaver dam and observed a tree the beaver's chopped down. We saw red squirrels and gray squirrels. We saw people with dogs and people on horses. The girls picked wild flowers and ferns.

Dam

Causeway

And 5.5 hours later, we emerged from our journey. Happy. Hungry. Exhausted. Kids catching their second wind. Only two deer ticks. And 14 more stamps later. We went home, ate dinner and crashed!


Note to self: eat before you go on a "little" hike!


Did you know that the CT State DEP has letterboxes? Yup. Collect five stamps and contact them and once it's verified, they will send you a patch. How cool is that?

So far, so good...

Thursday evening, the girls and I went outside for a bit. I wanted to water my flowers and adjust the stakes on the sunflower house. What ended up happening was the girls and I playing a ton of games I haven't played since I was their age. We played Duck, Duck Goose, Tag, Freeze Tag, Stuck in the Mud (another Tag game), Red Light, Green Light, Mother May I and Simon Says. It was great! I almost wished I had more kids so it would be even more fun!

Pomfret Street Cemetery and Cemetery on Rt. 44

Friday, summer vacation Day 2 was very nice, very nice indeed. Husband surprised me by taking the day off of work (for my birthday), getting up with the kids and making breakfast. We had though about going out to Newport, but by the time we got cleaned up and stuff, I decided I would rather grab a few letterboxing clues and see how many we could get. We only ended up having time for two different locations, but that netted us a total of 8 more stamps! Oddly, both location were in cemeteries, so I spent my 27th birthday traipsing around graveyards. But it was alot of fun! And very relaxing, quiet. The first cemetery had gravestones dating back to 1713! It was amazing to be surrounded by objects so old. And the details inscribed on the stones were amazing! Meenie managed to find every woodchuck hole in the cemetery as she walked around. I really thought the girls would have been bored, but they seemed to really enjoy themselves! After lunch, I was able to just sit and relax. My friend brought over a rose bush she brought for my birthday. It was perfect, I had one space in along my fence close to my other rose bushes and I was just saying to Husband that we needed to get something to put in that spot (we had tomatoes there last year - so I'll need a new space for them now). The girls (and Husband) brought me a GC to Old Navy, 5 books (unfortunately, I've already read 2 and am now working on Wicked - so much for summer reading) and an MP3 player (I am so sick of just listening to kids music - it's about time I had some adult lyrics to listen to! Now to figure out what I want to download. Feel free to post suggestions in the comments section.


Saturday was back to work for Husband. We got up and luckily, both girls had the early soccer games (usually they have different times so we are there forever). Even better was they were playing on adjacent fields, so I could stand on the grass between the fields. Even the drizzle didn't bother us. As the rain started to come down a little more heavily, I was enjoying watching them, Moe was carting around an umbrella much to big (I didn't take my camera out as it would have gotten much to wet) and the girls were enjoying playing. Unfortunately, the games came to an abrupt halt with the arrival of thunder. Those storms lasted 1/2 the morning! The rest of the day was just having fun in the house.

Sunday I actually got to take an hour long bath - alone! Moe played quietly in her crib and Einey and Meenie played quietly down stairs. No fighting, no arguing, nothing! We went to church and then stayed for their family fun day. We were there for almost 3 hours (wow!). The girls played games, bounced in the bounce house, dance and ate lots of food. They even tried to win a cake by doing a "cake walk" (musical chairs). They were given a cake anyway even though they didn't win. I was finally able to get them to leave and then we played outside for most of the rest of the day. The girls played their new games together and I worked in the garden. The sunflowers are now up to Moe's forehead and the other girls shoulders. Pretty soon, it will be high enough to make the roof!



Summer Vacation Days 2 -4:
Kids - Happy
Mom - Relaxed, Happy
House - Lived in, mostly clean

Edited to add pictures

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?