Karen's Birthday Weekend

It was my birthday this past Friday (yay me!) and it was so fun to have an extended birthday weekend celebration... We went "letterboxing" on Saturday afternoon, this is kind of like a treasure hunt, super-fun for kids or on a date... there's a website that lists letterboxes in different locations across the city; you bring a notebook, pen and a "family rubber stamp" (meaning the stamp that will represent your family when you do this). Follow the directions to the letterbox (usually a sealed plastic box) which is hidden away. You rubber-stamp the notebook stashed in the box and write the date and your names and stamp your notebook with the rubber-stamp you find in the box, basically swapping stamps. We did "Arboretum Cows" and "Mount Bonell" both of which were kid-friendly... it was fun to climb about trails on Mount Bonell and to explore parts of Austin we haven't been to in a while. Elizabeth loved following the "clues" to find the box, and the stamps in the stashed letterboxes were really fun to look at. Try it out at www.letterboxing.org and search for letterboxes in your area... or if you have a handheld GPS you could try Geocaching. It's similar, but in this you find boxes of little trinkets or toys and you bring one of your own "family trinkets e.g. mardi gras beads" to place in the stash and you can take one from the stash. The rule is "take from the cache, give to the cache". There are apparently 430,000 caches hidden in nearly every country in the world. See www.geocaching.com if you're interested in hearing more :)


I read about these fun activities in my favorite parenting magazine: Wonder Time... it's so great and unlike other parenting magazines doesn't try to sell you stuff in every article. When my neighbor recommended it to my she said that every edition makes her cry and I thought that sounded odd, but I've found the same thing. There's always a story that is thought-provoking and I'm always encouraged to put more into parenting, usually by offering more of myself to my kids rather than buying some new "must have" item.