One Step Closer to Happy Hour

So yesterday, my friend Rebecca and I took our collective 6 kids geocaching.  If you don't know about this Awesome Time Suckage opportunity, you need to read NORTH OF BEAUTIFUL by Justina Chen Headley.

The first time our little team of 8 ever went geocaching was on New Year's Eve.  We stood in the parking lot of the Dunkin' Donuts for an hour and a half looking for a cache called "My Daughter's Double D's."  I kid you not.  We, of course, did not find it because we were new to the whole thing and hadn't figured out yet that my iPhone is not exactly the best GPS device.  But whatev, we got a box of Munchkins out of the deal.  Plus, our husbands got about 40 calls that day from people saying that they saw us digging around the drive-thru menu board at DD and were worried that we might have lost one of our wedding rings.  Julio, "Not her wedding ring, just her mind."

Because it was 40 degrees yesterday and SNOMG is finally starting to melt, we decided that it was time for more geocaching.  Here is a pic of the 8 of us walking down the road trying to get to the woods wherein the cache is stashed.  Yes, my daughter was wearing my rain boots (7 sizes too big) because she didn't want to ruin her winter boots.  Don't argue with an 8 year old.  (That's me in the front of the line carrying Butter on my back).

At least 75 people passed us in cars on our way there.  No one stopped but I am certain that a few called DCFS.

Once we got into the woods, we had to convince Rebecca's eldest that there weren't bears in the woods.  We had to convince her youngest that everyone's feet were wet and we all were getting poked by branches.  Her middle daughter had the GPS tracker.



MiddleKid:  It's zero feet from where I am standing.  Zero feet.  That means like right underneath me.

(We all looked down and saw snow and nothing else.  We started kicking up the snow which led to general mayhem and more complaints).

Me:  Okay, let me try getting my phone out.  We can use the GPS on that too.



Here is a picture of me studying my phone.  I was actually just pretending.  Really, I was looking at the picture that Laura and Lisa Roecker sent me wherein my profile picture has pink hair.  In solidarity, all my profile pictures will have pink hair until their Awesome book THE LIAR SOCIETY comes out on March 1st.




Me:  Yeah, guys, it is definitely here somewhere.  My phone says we are right on top of it.
Kid1:  I'm freezing.  Can't we go home?
Kid2:  I think I heard a bear.
Kid3:  Do we have any Mambas left?
Kid1:  My feet are so wet.  Can't we go home?
Kid2:  Those footprints look really big.  They look like bear prints.
Kid3:  How come Butter got to have 3 Mambas and the rest of us only got 2?
Me:  Keep looking, guys.  It is a big ammo box, I think.


So this is what they thought that I was looking at on my phone:

This is what I was actually looking at:

After another half hour of these antics, we decided to throw in the towel and head home.  As I was carrying my 35 pound son back to the car which was parked .8 miles away, I looked at Rebecca and asked, "Why do we do this again?"

Rebecca shrugged and said, "We're just that much closer to happy hour."