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Snow is cool!! (No pun intended). You would think getting over 15 inches of snow less than a month ago would change my mind, but it hasn’t yet.

Sunday morning, we opened the garage to about 1 1/2 to 2 inches of snow. It caught us totally by surprise…it wasn’t even forecast, as far as I know. Of course, it’s been so cold since then, it’s still hanging around in the yard. Then Thursday, we were due for a 1 inch dusting. Well, it snowed all day and left about 4-5 inches. I was going to shovel the driveway and had even gone and bought some salt to put down. For some reason, I thought we should try sledding on it - our driveway is steeper than normal. I tried to sled when we had the massive snow storm, but it was so deep and fluffy, I just sank down in it.

Obviously, I should go first to make sure it is safe for the boys. I gave it a go with a slight running start - just me and the trusty $1 plastic toboggan that Stacy bought at a garage sale this summer. Anyway, it was a total success!! Then the boys tried it. Then we got out the old-school, steel runner and wood sled that Stacy got at a garage sale years ago (to be used as a decoration). That sled was great - until we got to the street. The snow plow had been by about an hour before and our sled run stopped at the end of the driveway. We came to a screeching halt. We made several runs with all the boys stacked on (including me) and several other variations on the stack. All-in-all, we spent about an hour sledding and had a great time.

It’s supposed to start snowing again in about 20 minutes. We’re expecting 4-7 more inches before it stops on Saturday. Here’s a little Sled Action Video. It’s in RealMedia format to cut down on the size. If you don’t have a RealMedia Player, you can download it here for free. I can’t wait to hit the slope tomorrow!

Well, I have stooped to a new low tonight. I served Red Beans & Rice for dinner and was afraid of the poor welcome it would receive with my boys. Ethan, in particular, is afraid of any food that is not candy or chips so I really wanted to make this a pleasant meal for him too, especially after the “green bean” incident two nights ago. First I let him prepare the meal with me. I did all the cooking and then he poured all the ingredients into the pot before it simmered 20 minutes. I talked to him about how he had cooked the meal and how yummy it would taste. I asked if he would be excited to eat the beans and his answer, “NO”. Now I decided to pull out the big guns - I taught him a little rhyme that my Mom taught me many years ago (YES - my mother taught it to me).

“Beans beans the wonderful fruit
The more you eat the more you toot.”

He laughed and then I told him that if he would eat a lot of beans at dinner he would able to toot in bed tonight and make Carter laugh a whole bunch. He thought this was great and laughed pretty hard! As we sat down to dinner he decided to tell Carter that if he ate all his beans he would be able to toot a lot in bed tonight. Well the rest of our dinner conversation consisted of the subject of tooting in our beds and lots of laughing. It did help Ethan to eat about 6 beans (the last 3 under duress) and got Carter to eat his whole bowl of food without complaint. I guess that’s something - now I am just wondering how bedtime will go tonight…

~S

What do you think would happen if you went to the gym naked? Or Wal-mart or the Mall? No really, I am always wondering what would happen. (I think this must stem from a secret fear I have of leaving the house and forgetting to get dressed.) Now let’s think about this…how would it pan out? How long would it take for someone to come up to you and ask if you realize you are naked? Or would ANYONE even tell you? Would they stare? Whistle? Laugh? Point? Or just ignore you completely? Would someone finally call the police and they would come to “take you downtown”? I am serious about this quandary…and I am looking for a volunteer to step forward and test my theories. I think that these days most people would just ignore you. People are so busy with their little lives that they wouldn’t even look up from their workout (or cart) to see that there was a naked person right there. BUT, I am very curious as to what would happen so if anyone decides to give it try - be sure I am the person you call with your “one phone call”!!

~S

Yesterday was our 11-year anniversary. As we are traditionalists with anniversary gifts, we gave the normal 11-year anniversary gift…electronics. OK, so it’s not electronics, but that’s how it worked at our house. I gave a smaller digital camera (since our good one is huge and bulky). I got a brand new Magellan eXplorist 200 GPS receiver!! Although it’s my gift, it rings closely to the time I gave Stacy a bowling ball for Valentine’s Day.

I talked about Geocaching in the 7 Jan journal entry. I also said that we would probably not be doing much of it…then along comes Mr. GPS receiver. My friend Bryan just got one for the purpose of Geocaching and still hasn’t figured out how to use it. He’s probably going to be a little upset that I beat him to the punch.

Anyway, we took it out for our first GPS hunt today and ended up trekking through the woods. It was a lot of fun. We got to what we thought was the right area and looked around for quite a while. The clue for the hidden treasure was, “in the fork.” There was a bunch of downed trees in the area, so we were looking in the “forks” of all the trees. With kids crying ready to go, I finally found a spot that didn’t look quite naturally covered. I start pulling sticks away and then let out an interesting noise - not quite a scream, but not quite a sigh either. It’s hard to put into words what it sounded like. As I had pulled away the first sticks, I saw a large rat-like head. That’s when the noise came out. Soon after that, I figure out that it’s fake and I’ve uncovered the treasure. All-in-all, it was a good time. More treasure hunting in our future!

J

Did you read my post on 29 Dec about Runaway Shopping Carts? In there, I described how I see people walking their groceries to their apartments using Meijer shopping carts. For the last few days, I’ve seen a couple of abandoned carts on the back lawn of the apartment building, just off the main road. I thought it would be funny to take a picture and throw it on the journal for you to see.

So I’m trying to find a good place to park and take a picture. There is nowhere to park near the cart I spotted off the main road, so I pull in to a side street that winds through the complex. I spot a few carts up the road and I go up to take a snapshot. After that, I thought it might be funny to count them and put that on the site, but I was never prepared for what I would find. When I rounded the corner at the end of the complex, there was a parking lot FULL of the carts. There must have been 30 of them! I didn’t think you’d believe it, so I’m including the pictures. I wonder if Meijer cares???

J

We went on a “real-live” treasure hunt last weekend. Stacy introduced the family to Letterboxing. Someone hides a “treasure,” which is simply a waterproof container, like a small Rubbermaid box. Inside the box are a journal and a stamp. When you find the box, you use their stamp in your Letterbox journal and then you stamp in their journal with your own stamp. There are approximately one bazillion letterboxes hidden around the world. If you go to the letterbox website, you can find the ones nearest you. Each letterbox is listed with directions on how to find the “treasure.” The directions are often printed in Pirate-like fashion - “go to the lone knobby tree, head 040 degrees for 20 paces, etc…”.

Closely related to Letterboxing is Geocaching. It’s about the same thing, but the treasure location is given using GPS coordinates. So, having a GPS receiver is obviously helpful, but not always necessary. Although the “treasure box” has the usual journal, it also has some type of actual treasures (mostly trinkets). When you find the cache, you may take something from the box, but it is customary to leave something if you do. You can also take nothing and leave nothing. Whatever you do should be recorded in the journal. I say that a GPS receiver is helpful, but we actually found a cache without a GPS. The cache was planted at a historical log cabin built around 1799. The directions pretty much told us where it was, so we went for it. The cache box had some interesting things in it, like a fly fishing lure made from a tooth (a dentist left it). We left a Spiderman disk and took a small toy jet.

We had a pretty good time, but it was a little cold and muddy. All of the 59 feet of snow had finally melted and left a nice mess. I’m not sure if we’ll do much more Geocaching, but we are definitely going to do more Letterboxing. Give it a try!

J