Pumpkins!

Saturday was a bit rainy, but being the Washingtonians we are, we all went to the pumpkin patch.  It was your typical Hurst/Reed outing with Madelynn and Andrew calling out for each other making sure they were never too far away from one another.

Finding the Perfect Pumpkin

 They had lots of little sights for the children.  Andrew drove him and Maddie on their first illegal date (or is second cousins legal?  Ew either way :) ) They found the Old Woman Who Lived in a Shoe.

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Craven Farms had a face painting area set up for the kids.  Madelynn and Mikhaila got their faces painted.  It was decided Andrew was too much of a boy, and would not sit still for such frivolous things.  Instead he ate a big old chili bowl.  (Have we ever mentioned how much we love that kid?)

My Little Kitty Cat

Mikhaila got Optimus Prime

Andrew After the Pickin' was Done

Madelynn Feeding the Ducks

On Our Way to Pacific Beach

My mother, stepfather, brother and his brood came up from Utah to join us at Pacific Beach for the annual Anderson family reunion.  (As my grandmother would say "She has posterity").

Madelynn and Matthew had not seen each other since February.  They warmed up to each other fairly quickly.  Matthew had a lot of patience with Madelynn once he realized her communication delay.  They shared all the toys very well, and enjoyed hugging and being with each other.

Matthew wanted to ride with Uncle Jeremy, Aunt Crystal , and Madelynn.  We were happy to have him.  The kids did really well...at first.

Chilling, reading her book.

He's very delicate ,and needs a neck pillow.

Matthew then got mad at me when he took a toy from Madelynn, and I took it from him.

You don't want to see him mad. :)

Then he was happy just in time to fall asleep.

I love you Crystal!

The Toe Heads are sleeping.

The trip was a little over two and a half hours, and for toddlers they did very well.  

Seattle Geocaching

I have found a great motivator to walking during my lunch hour is to go geocaching.  I've found 7 or so.  I usually walk two miles during these expeditions.  The walks have helped me with my social anxiety as I often find myself in crowds of people on my way to the cache.

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Weekend of June 23rd

Saturday's adventure took us to AMC theaters in Woodinville.  We thought Madelynn may have been old enough to sit through the movie Brave.

She did well through the previews and 40 minutes of the movie.

Once she had the melt down we left an unfinished movie behind and decided to drive back to Snohomish to attempt to find a cemetery cache. We got there and we're astounded by the beauty and history of the cemetery. We didn't solve the puzzle before Madelynn was over that too. We will go back if for nothing else to appreciate the veteran history.

On Sunday we went to Blackman's Lake and Hill Park.  Two out of the four caches were kind of tricky.  

The first cache was hidden in a cedar tree.  There were several cedars trees in the area.  I was convinced it was under a rock, which it was not.  Scraped from thorns, and itching from mosquito bites I walked down the trail, and noticed an opening in the trunk of another cedar.

The next one was pretty simple.  The coordinates were pretty spot on, and it just took a minute of looking around before we found it.

The next cache was very well hidden, and took about twenty minutes to find.  Once it was located it required the ability to turn into a spider monkey.  Thankfully, Jeremy was more than up for the challenge.

On our way to the fourth cache we stopped to visit the ducks, and relish the view of Blackman's lake.  

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The final cache was a pretty generic magnetic cache, and was found quickly.

After a day of geocaching we went to the playground area of the park, and let Madelynn play.  

It is not lost on us how fortunate we are living in this area, and we are taking advantage of the beauty any way we can (except for camping).

Another Sunday, Another Geocaching Adventure

We headed back to spot where we had been unsuccessful in finding a cache the week before. We were still unsuccessful. I think until we get a real GPS, we will be unable to locate it.

Maddie had fallen asleep while we were looking for the elusive cache.

We decided to move on. About a 1/2 mile away was another cache. On our way I could smell cows. Jeremy just looked at me weird when I had mentioned it. We finally spotted some down the road. Never doubt a girl from Whidbey when she says she smells cows!


We came across the area for the next cache. It was in the parking lot of a medical facility. Thankfully with it being a Sunday there were no muggles (Geocachers stole a Harry Potter term, I know.) to see us snooping through the trees. We found this one fairly quickly as it was a pretty large cache.

Can you see it?

We started heading toward our next cache, further southeast when it started to rain.

We had to cut our time short, as thunder started rolling in. We had already been at it for a couple of hours (there was long stretches of nothing between caches), though we were still amped to keep going. There was on final cache in the direction of home so we were able to grab that. By this time it had been raining pretty hard, and it was time to hustle home.

Madelynn was such a good sport the whole time. We lucked out with this one.

Utah County Caching

We had three hours to kill before Darren's BBQ, and we decided to use them caching.

We started out in South Jordan, looking for a cache hidden in the SJ cemetery. It was a pretty simple find once we figured out true north from the starting coordinates.

Next it was on to the AF one to find a multi-cache, and a traditional cache. The multi-cache was a lot of fun. We had our starting coordinates, and looking around at the old tombstones we had to answer questions to figure out our next set of coordinates. We had to do this for two legs.

On our way to the second site.

The second site took us to the Veteran's Monuments. I neglected to get a photo of this, but it is such a beautiful site, and I felt quiet appropriate spending time there reading all the plaques. (Click here for beautiful photos describing the site.) After getting the information we needed we were finally able to find our ending site. In this case it was a virtual cache, and we had to take a picture to get credit.

The AF Pioneer Memorial

As luck would have it our next cache was very close. This is a traditional cache, in which one signs their name to it.

Madelynn at this point had had enough caching for one day, and we took her to my mom's house.
Jeremy and I then had about 40 minutes left before going to the BBQ and decided to hit the PG cemetery to try and find two more.

We were successful at finding the first one, but ran out of time for the second. We will have to return to the site when we are back in Utah County for some time.

It was a really good day. Got in some much needed exercise, as you all can see, and really enjoyed each others company and puzzle solving skills.

New Family Hobby

We discovered Geo Caching today. After what seemed like hours of finding a compatible application for our blackberries we were off and finding caches. We found five today, and plan to go out and find more this weekend.

It was so much fun. It was warm with a light breeze which made it very enjoyable to be outdoors. We got to get Madelynn some natural Vitamin D, and Jeremy and I got some much needed exercise.

The Geo Caching definitely made exercising more fun, and we seemed to go further than we would have on a normal walk.