44 Years Ago

We have in our possession something that is priceless. We have David's first grade writing book from 44 years ago. Apparently each day the students had to write stories in their books about whatever they wanted to write about. Spelling didn't matter as you will see below. On our final night together for the Christmas holidays I took the book out and we read the stories David had written so long ago. We laughed until we cried! Below is one story about a turtle then be sure to watch the video as Jamie and Jordan attempt to read another story. It will show what our night was like as we read thru these stories. Absolutely priceless!

We think this is what he was saying:

The turtle. I found a turtle. It was Skippy. Holly Skippy. I'm glad I found you. Skippy Holly Holly Skippy. The End.

click the little arrow to see and hear the video of another story... too funny!

Playtime

We have had a lot of playtime during the holidays, both inside and out. Even the dogs got into the act at times. We played quite a few games. Below are some of the fun playtimes.

Jamie and Hannah playing checkers

that's me when we were playing Mad Gab, there were about 12 of us playing and we had so much fun trying to figure out each phrase

Hannah and I playing tic-tac-toe




Jordan and Sasha playing catch

Hannah with her cards

Jordan and Hannah playing Go Fish

we were playing one of our favorite games, Mexican Train, a dominoes game. No one looks happy in this photo but I assure you we were having a lot of fun!

Hannah tossing the frisbee for Sasha

a fun night playing Trivial Pursuit, 90's edition

Christmas Geocaching

Jordan got his own GPS as a Christmas gift so yesterday afternoon Hannah and I went with him to find three geocaches. We were three for three by the time we finished but the first one was really hard to find. It took us an hour to locate it. The clue given said it was hidden "in a hidey hole in the base of a tree". That sounded easy enough and the difficulty level was not very high so off we went. Little did we know that when we got to the area that nearly every single tree there had a hole in the base of it. The GPS coordinates seemed to jump all over the place. We searched high and low, over and over and over. Jordan and Hannah were ready to give up but I persisted and finally found it. In the photo below you can see Jordan pulling the box out of the hole in the base of the tree that was leaf covered.

This was the second cache and much easier to locate than the first one. It was hidden at the same lake but on the other side so we had to drive around the lake to find it. The GPS led us right to the site and within a minute we had located it. Jordan traded for a nice brand new, still in the package, tape measure and Hannah took some playing cards.

The third and final cache was hidden in the picnic area of a nearby Rest Area on I-85. The difficulty and terrain levels were both pretty high but were very deceiving as we walked right to it and found it with ease. There was nothing difficult about it. This time it was hidden in a small tupperware container at the base of this large tree near the fence. Hannah traded for a dollar bill.

We had a lot of fun, got some exercise and checked out some areas we never knew of around here. It was a nice day weather wise and we always have fun geocaching.

Chritsmas Town USA

McAdenville is a small town in North Carolina known as Christmas Town. Each year all the residents of the town decorate their homes with lights and people come from all over to drive thru the town. Thousands of visitors make the drive and we joined them last night. After getting off the interstate we sat in a long line of cars for well over an hour before we finally got into the town. After driving thru we turned around and drove back the other direction and pulled off in a parking area. We took hot cocoa and sausage balls and enjoyed those and made some photos. I must say that photos don't do justice to how beautiful all the lights are. Nothing is gaudy or over done, but instead just beautiful. Below are a few of the photos we took last night.