Geocaching Inside My House

My kids and I love to go geocaching and letterboxing.  It is a wonderful family activity that gets us outside and exploring new places and things.  The thrill of the hunt and the excitement of locating the treasures keeps us coming back for more.  Not surprisingly, Little Miss loves geocaching and letterboxing the most out of all of my kiddles.  Naturally, she is at the perfect age for hiking trips deep into the woods.  And at her age, she understands the process the best.  It can be difficult taking the boys on one of these expeditions, though.  Chub-Chub loves to find treasures and is quite the willing participant, but he is still a toddler and, as such, can be challenging to reign in on long nature walks.  Miracle Man is an entirely different story.  He gets too hot or too cold...and cranky very easily.  He tires sooner than his siblings, and he gets easily distracted.  As for me, chasing after two toddlers while trying to keep up with Little Miss is painful and exhausting for me at the moment. Long story short, we don't go letterboxing or geocaching nearly as often as we would like to.  In fact, as the boys have gotten older (and less easily confined to their stroller), we have gone on fewer and fewer of these types of hunts (and none for this year).  I am sure that, with time, it will get easier and we will be able to geocache and letterbox all over the place once again.

Lucky for me, I recently discovered that each day I do my own treasure hunting of sorts.  When I vacuum.  Of course there is the usual dirt, dust, cat hair, dog hair, etc.  But each time I vacuum, I am always surprised at what is lurking in the nooks and crannies of my house a mere day after the last time I plugged it in and began a search.  So while I cannot go on geocaching outings as often as I would like,  I take comfort in knowing that each day, there will be a new cache to find right inside my own home with my favorite machine, the vacuum.

Here is a list of the top 10 most interesting items found in today's vacuum cache:

10.  Cheerios...yes, AGAIN! Today's location:  the couch.  Because everyone knows that you simply cannot watch the Smurf movie without cheerios, mommy.

9.  A tiny leaf...I'm not quite sure how that got into the living room.  Are we growing a tree inside our house?  Am I that oblivious to the sheer number of living things in our home that I did not notice an entire tree growing in here??  Alas! It's gone now, anyway!

8.  A black olive...so glad it was in the kitchen where it belonged at least!

7.   Kitty litter...always, always, always.  Today, though, it wasn't just scattered pieces kicked off paws from jumping out of the litter box.  Nooooooo, today, there was a whole pile of litter next to the litter box (obviously in an attempt to cover up a stinky floor tile).

6.   Dried up playdough.  Of course.

5.  A paperclip...ummmm, do we even USE those in the house?  I can't remember the last time I took out a paperclip.

4.  An earring backing...we should own stock in the company that makes these things!

3.  A feather.  Nope, we do NOT, nor will we EVER own any kind of bird!  NEVER!!!  Did the cat bring it in the house, then?  And, if so, where IS the rest of what used to be attached to said feather????  YIKES!

2.  A turquoise, high heeled Barbie shoe...I guess her prince won't be able to see if the shoe fits her now!

1.   A cheese stick wrapper.  On.the.floor.  (Oh no you didn't!)  Now, I KNOW that none of my children would ever throw their wrapper right on the floor.  There must be some logical  explanation for this.  Like:  Chub-Chub's arm broke off and was swallowed up by the dog just as he was about to put the wrapper in the garbage maybe? Or perhaps Miracle Man tripped over a giant elephant with pink polka dots on his way to throw it out, and that caused him to miss the garbage can completely? No, these stories could not be true you say? Then what the ever-loving-heck caused the cheese stick wrapper to end up on the freaking floor for crying-out-loud? A child carelessly dropped it?  Nahhhhh!  That's too far-fetched for sure!

Well, there you have it.  My cache for the day!  I can't wait to see what tomorrow brings!


Yours in geocaching,
Marathon Momma

Top Secret!

I have a little secret...do you promise you won't tell ANYONE?  I will only tell you, if you promise...and I mean, Pinky Promise not to say a word!  Okay, you do promise?  Well, great then, here goes:  I am wearing my Christmas  socks already!  Not that I am one of those people who is super-hyped up on Christmas, mind you--because that's really not me.  In fact, I never really liked Christmas much at all for many, many years.  Although, I do have to say that now that I have 3 kids, I am definitely looking forward to Christmas this year!  I can't wait to see the boys get soooooo excited!  And, realistically, I may start decorating soon...just because it is going to take me incredibly long to accomplish it all this year...  

But that isn't the reason why I am wearing my cute little gingerbread, santa, and reindeer socks already.  Nope.  The real reason is somewhat of a nasty confession...it is actually out of necessity!  The whole truth, and nothing but the truth is...I have to wear the Christmas socks because I am so incredibly behind on the laundry in the house!  Gasp! Shock!  The Horror!

Yup...that's right.  I have random piles of clean and dirty laundry everywhere right now!  You see, I have had a really tough two weeks with my achiness and exhaustion, and so, I have focused on putting my energy only toward the necessities, such as feeding the kids, keeping the kitchen in order (with the dishes actually clean), and making sure that there are clean clothes to at least search through each day.

If you don't know me at all, I should at least inform you that I was always a neat freak before having kids, especially prior to the twins.  And even after the twins were born, I took a deep pride in having a clean home.  Keeping up with the house when the boys first came home also felt like a necessity to me, with the endless stream of visitors.  I would even go so far as to say that I was pretty obsessive over it for quite some time during that first year--to the point where my friends expressed their worries about me.  LOL.  But now, with everything else going on, I have had to lower my expectations...so they are much, much, MUCH lower now than they ever were before. Now, don't get me wrong...I do keep the basics cleaned. And I do the best I can, given my time and energy constraints each day.  But, it is not nearly as tidy as I used to like it.  And Mary Poppins would definitely not approve! No white glove tests are allowed in my  house!

Now, in our family of five, if I don't do at least one load of laundry each day, I am pretty much like the Titanic...sunken at the bottom of the sea!  But when you have the aches, pains, and exhaustion I have, carrying loads of laundry up and down stairs is really challenging.  So right now, as I sit in my living room typing, there are about three clean (and unfolded ) loads on the couch, one in the washer, one in the dryer, one in the hamper upstairs, and about four strewn all about my bedroom floor!  Yes, folks, you read that correctly!  My bedroom floor is about as disastrous as a 7-year-old girl's.  It looks like the proverbial bomb went off up there.  So, pretty much, Little Miss and I have matching messes!  (And I wonder why I can't get her to pick up her  room?!)

Finding clothes for the kids, my husband, or myself each day can be quite a challenge.  But the socks...ahhhhhh the socks!  Now that  is something I am not willing to spend the time and energy searching for, for myself to wear each day!  No sireee!  I will not frustrate myself with that endless, exhausting, and somewhat confusing task (where IS that other sock???)  of trying to find two socks that actually match, and match whatever outfit I have managed to put on myself.   Besides, when you're looking for the matchers to Christmas socks in the abyss of the sock drawer, it is, quite frankly, waaaayyyy easier!  Believe me when I say that, right now, I am THRILLED with that incredibly-popular-yet-quite-convenient-for-the-parents-mismatching-sock-trend of my daughter's generation!  Now...if we could only get the boys of the nation on board!  Sigh!

Well, that's my secret...shhhhhhhh.....don't tell!

Happy Sock Hunting,

MM