Yesterday.

We went to the park with our homeschool group, a group of people that I have truly grown to love. The only problem was, we were plagued by yellowjackets a little bit. They attacked my lemonade pitcher and finally, I just put it on another table and let them have it. We homeschool moms had a really good time discussing our struggles with schooling our children to people who really understand. We concluded that although it's not always easy, it is worth it. And, having had my kids in public school, I know that really it's not much more work than that. Sometimes my kids would have 4 hours of homework in public school (which probably would have only been 1 hour if you subtracted the 3 hours of whining, but I digress).

Anyway, we had a good time and at the end of the playground time, one other family and our family went on our first Letterboxing adventure. A letterbox is a plastic box with a notebook and a rubber stamp in it. The person who hides the box puts clues on the letterboxing web site so that others can come and find the box. They are supposed to bring a compass and their own rubber stamp. They follow the clues (like a treasure hunt) and find the box (hopefully) then sign it and put their rubber stamp in it. They take the box hiders rubber stamp and stamp their own letterboxing notebook, which is a record of all the letterboxes they've found.

Our first experience with this was very fun. We didn't have either a compass or a rubber stamp (I left it at home) but we set off anyway. We followed clues in the park past some silos, past a deer enclosure, up a trail to a sign that said 'shortcut' and then walked 16 paces and looked to the left for a teepee of trees and then followed the rest of the clues to the box. We had to dig it up from under a log! We all signed it and carefully hid it back where it was, then we updated the letterboxing website that this box has been found and is still there. A treasure hunt that I didn't have to make up and hide the clues for. How cool is that?