We're home!

On our trip, Jeff wanted to do something (new to our family) called Letterboxing.
If you click on the link, you can go to the national site and learn more about it, but in a nutshell
it goes like this...

Families around the country hide a box in a discrete location and the directions to the location can be found on the website. We printed out a bunch of them to look for on our trip. When you read the clues and get to the general area, you then need to look for the thing you're looking for. lol And, in this case, it was "Man's Best Friend" (notice dog above). If you look under "Man's Best Friend" you'll find "what you're looking for" and remember to "put it back the way you found it"
so that it stays hidden. It didn't take us long to do this one but it was a great start to a soon-to-be weekend-family-fun-event that we plan on continuing.

The "treasure" always consists of a stamp and a booklet, hidden inside some sort of seal-tight container. You, as a family, need to pick your own stamp, and stamp that stamp in their book, and then take the stamp inside the "treasure" and stamp that in your book. We bought a leather-bound journaling book for $3 at Dollar General. There's a place for the date and any remarks you'd like to make along with lots of space for the stamp. Some stamps are quite large while others are small.

Our family stamp was going to be an elephant but I couldn't find one anywhere in the area, so we picked a Halloween Kitty. I doubt that this stamp will remain our family stamp as we are going to get an elephant one soon. The Kitty stamp will become what's called a "hitchhiker". A Hitchhiker stamp is a stamp that's placed in any of the letter boxes and they travel from place to place, never knowing where they'll end up. :) Cool, huh?

Once you find the treasure and stamp it, you can write a message in it. We usually put why we were there (vacationing) and had all the kids sign their names. :) Once, I even put my blog site. I thought it was a lot of fun!

We found our first Letterbox!

Natalie signing the book.

Deanie finding a 'drive-by' Letterbox.

This was a really fun Letterbox, called "With This Ring". A story about a woman who wanted to marry a man that her family did not think was good enough. She put the engagement ring around her neck to keep it hidden, however she ended up with fever and her brother found the ring, snatched it from her neck and threw it in the marshland. The legend is that "Alice" was searching for the ring until she died and is now a ghost still looking for it.

Alice's grave was difficult to find, but once we did we found it covered with little trinkets and rings. So cool! The story goes on to say that you're to walk around her grave backwards 13 times and Alice will appear over the stone wall. The kids enjoyed walking around the grave. :)

This particular letterbox was found hidden in the old stone fence inside a small seal-tight canister along with a booklet for our stamping. The stamp was a wedding ring. You can read more about Alice Flagg HERE.

We plan to do more letterboxing in Lexington and there's even one in Versailles. This might be a fun thing for your family to do too. Happy hunting!

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We went to a fun putt-putt place and enjoyed several rounds before the girls abruptly put down their poles and said, "we're done! let's go!" lol I grabbed some great pics along the way.

Jeff trying to squeeze Colie and Dean to death. lol
Nathaniel and Nat weren't in our group (no more than 5 to a group).

* * *

On Tuesday, we spent the entire day at the beach. It was glorious and I wish we'd had more days like this, but maybe next time.

If you're wondering where Nathaniel is on this all-day-at-the-beach day, well he's in the water and didn't come out! lol He had a blast!

This was the morning we were leaving. Jeff gave everyone the chance to go down to the beach to look for shells, but the only taker was Nicole. No surprise as she was talking about going every morning (altho getting UP that early was a different story, she didn't want to lol). On the last day she decided that she would go and I'm so glad they did. Jeff caught some wonderful shots of her, especially the one of her dancing. I love this picture. This is so Nicole.

All in all, our trip, despite a few days of rain, was wonderful. We hope to go back again soon.
I hope you all had a lovely week. I begin work tomorrow and am really looking forward to it! I wasn't sure I'd feel that way, what with a whole week off, but I do. As I begin to fill all the recent orders and get those taken care of, I'll begin working on my Holiday Open House creations. My plan is to have the Open House on November 23rd.

Thank you for being patient with your orders.
I truly appreciate it, and my family appreciates you!