Get this:
You tell a bunch of kids that you're going on a treasure hunt. Suddenly, they're jumping up and down, they're all excited, they're ready to get out in the cold, winter air and get some exercise.
And then they stop and stare at you with that "What are you trying to pull?" look on their faces.
"What are you trying to pull?" They ask.
"Nothing," I say. "Absolutely nothing. It's a wonderful Sunday morning, and I think it would an excellent day for a treasure hunt." I look at my husband.
"Don't you, Bo?" Aforementioned husband nods.
"So we're going out in the yard to find some treasure you buried. Is this like the time you hid our christmas gifts in pirate chests and told us that Black Beard the Pirate left them behind?"
"Um, no," I say. "It's not at all like that. We're not looking in our yard. And I didn't hide the treasure. In fact, I don't even know exactly where it is."
"Is this like the time that you hid the dollar bills in the yard so that we would be motivated to pull weeds, and you told us that Black Beard the Pirate left them behind?"
"Um, no," I say. "This actually has nothing to do with Black Beard the Pirate at all."
"Okay, then what's the catch?" They ask, their eyes narrowed in disbelief.
"There's no catch. There's only a cache," I say, trying to be clever.
"A what?"
I point Houdin to the computer, where I have pulled up the FAQ for Geocaching. "Read," I say.
Before long, Houdin and Bard have read about geocaching, and we're in the van and on our way. Our whole clan went, including The Baby, Sweetheart and The Grandpa, which is unusual because The Grandpa doesn't go very many places.
We head to the first cache of the day, and Monet immediately takes to the GPS, letting us know how rapidly we're approaching the cache. It's not far from our house, so we don't take a long time to get there. It's a good thing, with all of the "Are we there yet?" and "It's my turn to hold the CPR!" "It's a GPS, Silly!" "Whatever!"
We're looking for a mini-cache, hidden in a tiny painted Altoids tin, and we've looked all over the destination. The kids are about to give up, but I'm not. I look over there. I look under that. I look up there...AHA! I walk away from the hiding place.
Bard catches the goofy grin on my face.
"You found it, didn't you?" She asks. I nod.
"Where is it?" She asks. I shrug.
We play a game of "hotter/colder" and, soon enough, everyone has found it.
Everyone, except Sweetheart.
Sweetheart wasn't very happy at all. As a matter of fact, I think she was about as unhappy as a treasure hunter can be. Even after we gave her the cache tin to open, she cried. She was, in a word, bummed.
We replaced the cache exactly where we found it (and I'm not tellin') and set the GPS for the next cache search. This time, the cache was along a walking trail, so we got a nice little hike. This time, Houdin was the first to find the cache, hidden in an ammo box. We sat at a picnic bench, read the log, and looked through the treasure. The premise of geocaching is that you can take something from the cache box, but you have to
leave something behind. The kids had all brought a little something to leave, and they each took something that connected with them: Sweetheart and Houdin took fishing lures, Monet took a baseball. I can't remember what Bard took. What DID you take, Bard?
Night was falling, but we still had enough time to place our own first cache.
Today's Lessons: Mapping coordinates, hiking, visual observation, latitude and longitude, following directions, reading, writing and sharing.
