More geocaching & birthdays.

Yesterday was my birthday, and It. Was. Awesome.  Abby and Ben came to see the house for the first time (we moved in almost a year ago!), and loved it.  I had made some more pumpkin cookies before they came over, and they ate half of them before we left to go find another geocache.  It was another cache located in Hibernia County Park, which is where Jeff & I found our first one.  This was kind of outside the park, and we walked a mile to get there because we didn't know there was parking right next to it, but it was worth it.  After walking down a beautiful, leaf-covered trail surrounded by trees and Brandywine Creek on one side, we stopped to check our GPSs and read the clue: "if you don't see it, TRI again."  Well, obviously that wasn't a typo, and we were still trying to figure out how much farther we had to go when Ben said, "'tri'...like three tree trunks maybe?"  We all looked up and to our left, and right there was a tree with three trunks.  Can you believe that?  Without realizing it, we had stopped right where we needed to be!  We found the cache, left our names and a trinket (a temporary rose tattoo), and then, because it was getting dark, we turned around and headed back to our cars.

We then Chili's for dinner, which was very nice.  Against my strict instructions not to do it, Abby and Ben somehow gave our waiter "the sign" and I ended up being sung to.  EMBARASSING!  But I'm glad they did it.  Abby got me an awesome set of porcelain measuring cups that are red with a stitch pattern around the outside (I badly needed those!), an amazing "winter berry" candle, and a bad of Starbuck's Cinnamon Coffee.  I haven't tried it yet, but I know it's going to be delicious--especially with caramel apple creamer.

Today it's beautiful again--cool, windy, sunny.  I'm going back to the trail at Hibernia while there's more light out, so I can get a bunch of photos.  Here are a few from yesterday!

Jeff playing with the new candle.

 This young man, named Cody, had left what looks like his senior portrait in the cache.  Weird?

Geochaching n00bs.

Today Jeff and I went geocaching for the first time.  We spent an hour and a half searching for the right trail at a local county park, and finally ended up in the right direction.  However, the GPS on my phone kind of stinks so it was skipping around a lot.  As we were heading back to the trail we'd left to search for this particular cache, I noticed that the GPS was saying we were closer than we'd been all day, so I stopped to look around again and low and behold...there it was!  An old, cracked Tupperware container beneath a rock.  Hot damn, I'd found it!  We dug through the contents for a while (small things people had left, like trinkets, candy, rocks, coins, etc.), signed the paper log that had somehow stayed dry, and then went to Sonic for lunch.  Not a bad way to spend a lovely Sunday afternoon!

Here are a few photos I took along the way:

Jeff leads the way.

Jeff with the log--we actually found it!

We saw this guy on our way back to the car--it's a groundhog!