Mother's Day

Yesterday was Mother's Day, and I was treated like royalty by Kelsey and the kiddos.  They let me sleep in (well, after being up until 2:30am with a very gassy, cranky Max I think I deserved to sleep a little late!) and then woke me up with a yummy breakfast of french toast with fresh fruit and my coffee already made.  Stella and Colby could barely stand to wait until they were done eating to give me their gifts, so halfway through a bite I was bombarded by my Mother's Day gifts.  Stella had made some cute things in her class... I was given a sweet paper tea pot with some chamomile tea attached to it, a painted rock (very similar to the one I gave my dad when I was a kid that he STILL uses as a paper weight in his office!), a plant, and lip stick (which she has used more than me.  Where did this girly girl come from??).  Colby had gone shopping with Daddy the night before and he got me a cookie scoop.  We used it this morning when we made some yummy chocolate chip cookies.  Max got me a cool picture frame and Kelsey got me..... a glue gun.  A man after my own crafty heart.  I've been searching the house up and down for things to glue now.  Watch out. 

I got to choose an activity to do for the day, so I decided to go letterboxing with the family.  I had learned about letterboxing last year soon after we moved here.  Apparently it's a pretty popular hobby in these parts. 

Letterboxing is sort of a treasure hunt.  Around the world, there are 20,000 boxes hidden in various locations.  In these boxes are a rubber stamp and a notebook.  When you find one of these boxes, (from clues found on websites such as http://www.letterboxing.org/) you make an imprint of the found stamp in your own notebook and, using your own stamp, make an imprint in the notebook from the box.  You then record your name, the date, and where you are from.  These boxes are EVERYWHERE and now that I know about them, I'm realizing that I walk by them all of the time.  So, yesterday I printed up some clues to find letterboxes at Dinosaur State Park in neighboring Rocky Hill.  The kids grabbed their backpacks, filled them with snacks, and we stopped at the craft store on the way so that Colby and Stella could pick out a special stamp to use.  Stella chose a ladybug and Colby chose a dinosaur. 

Here's triceratops Stella at the entrance of Dinosaur State Park.  (side note:  Did you know that Connecticut is a mecca for all things dinosaur??  At Dinosaur State Park are 200 million year old dinosaur footprints!  Whoa!)

So, off we set on our adventure with clues in hand and fingers crossed that we would actually find something! 

And, lo and behold, after following the red trail and merging with the blue trail and coming to the intersection with the yellow trail, we looked left and found the "3 sister tree" just as the clues said we would. 

And, right there in the middle of the trees was our very first letterbox find!  Yay!  This particular one was planted by a girl scout troop in 2009.  Stella opened the container and there we found a butterfly stamp and a notebook FILLED with other stamps from others who had found it.  We stamped their notebook and stamped ours with the butterfly one and then quietly placed it back in its hiding spot. 

Unfortunately, the hiking trails closed 5 minutes after our first find, so we weren't able to look for the other two boxes that are hidden in the park (plus there was a certain 3-year old boy who was whining the entire time about how boring it was and about how much his feet hurt.... funny, when we got home he probably ran the equivalent of 1 mile up and down our hallway with no complaints.  Huh.).  We will definitely go back for those another day.  (and continue to search for more in other places.  We can't wait to find the ones hidden at Sunset Beach, NC later this month!)

We headed back to the trail head for a little snack break. 

Even Max had a snack.  (I'm sorry, but is there anything cuter than a baby eating a big apple?  I think it's adorable.  Poor Max has had 2 apples since this one just so I can watch him eat it!)

So, that was my Mother's Day.  It was a great day spent with my amazing little family.  I love them all so much.