GeoCaching Adventures

I keep meaning to blog about this, and I keep forgetting. Our family has continuted GeoCaching, though a lot more as of late. It actually really makes my day that my hubby loves it, I think we found the right niche for him between technology and the outdoors. Here are a couple of our adventures over the last month:

My dad hid this one by his work. Turns out it's a really common place for homeless people to come sleep at night.

My sister and her husband hid this one, a total of 16 containers in a Choose Your Own Adventure type of cache hidden throughout Loveland and Fort Collins.We started this one in the beginning of July...

This one was hidden near the river that runs through our hometown. We discovered it while playing on the banks of the river and catching toads.

This one was hidden in a lampost and SCARED THE CRAP out of me when it fell out and wiggled :D

A park we had never been to.

My dad hid this one, had to make the kids stay on the asphalt as there was broken glass and asbestos everywhere.

Finally discovered our first "fate" in the Zombie cache. We hope to eventually find all the containers.

I found this one in a lampost in the parking lot during my husband's visit to the doctor.

At the nearby Cracker Barrel.

We were never able to find this one, but we did find several unused (thank God) condoms and beer bottle caps. I suspect some over anxious teenagers took it.

We visited Denver and took our cousin caching, found in a lamp post.

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Happy Birthday JoJo!

Happy birthday to my sweet, wonderful little girl!! I love you oh so very much!

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Crocheted Baby Doll Carriers

I found this SUPER CUTE pattern on Ravelry the other day and I just had to make one for JoJo! (I asked Cadie and Ethan if they wanted one too, not interested.) It worked up super fast and I LOVED how it turned out, and already one of my friends asked me to make one for her little girl! They are a blast to make and I decided to list them on my Etsy shop. Enjoy!

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The Most Amazing Day Ever

I really wanted to sit down and write about our day yesterday. Life has been hard, and we have had some really rough days in our household lately. My kids have been way too saturated in media lately because, well, it's just easier to put on a show than deal with the fighting. I have really wanted us to be more active and outdoorsy as a family though, so yesterday we went to a local reservoir to fish, something our family has never done before. I tried to set up our bait well, but honestly my husband and I have NO IDEA what we are doing when it comes to fishing so we definitely did not catch anything. The kids had fun trying though, and of course they had to play in the water almost the whole time we were there. My friend Jim took some beautiful pictures of our kids while we were there and I have to share them because I love them so much!

We had gotten all packed up to leave the lake when I got a text message from my sister that said "The cache was published." She and her husband have been working on a complex geocache for weeks that they refused to tell us anything about, so naturally we had to look it up on the website immediately. To our complete surprise, they had come up with a cache commemorating the Legend of Zelda games, our all time favorite family video game! They hid three individual caches for each piece of the triforce (power, courage, and wisdom) and each container showed a clue for opening the fourth cache, the Master Sword. It kills me that I shouldn't post pictures of any of it here because I don't want to give anything away, but I can tell you they did an amazing job with this Geocache! During our first stop we were "First to Find" that particular container, and an officer pulled up and asked Dave if he was looking for something. Dave said yes, a GeoCache, and the officer said he knew because he just got the notifications for a new cache and, while he couldn't search himself because he was on duty, he was enjoying watching the race for First to Find. We found the other two pretty easily too, with Cadie finding the third one all by herself! The final container was awesome, TJ had put a lot of work into making this amazing container and a great locking mechanism on it. We were First to Find that one as well because the other searchers had decided to only do one or two that day to spread them out over Groundspeak's "31 Days of Geocaching." I am allowed to post one photo, our swag from inside the containers:

I knew Jenilee had bought Shrinky Dinks, I had no idea she really went all out with them! Each container had several inside as different icons from the game. This cache allowed us to TOTALLY GEEK OUT the entire time and be in awe of the work they both put in to this cache. TJ is already planning out the next one they want to build, and I can hardly wait to see it!

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Cadence Pattern Has Been Released!

Oh my goodness, what an awesome experience! I finally was able to release my very first pattern, the Cadence Shawl! I named this one after my oldest daughter, and I plan on designing one called Joanna too :-D I had 7 beautiful knitters test it out for me and really took their feedback into consideration, and I think it made everything work together so nicely to become a fantastic pattern!

Cadence Shawlette

I have already gotten a lot of good feedback from people who like the pattern on Ravelry too, and at least two people have started it! It's a really quick and easy knit and so I hope to see the finished projects soon, that's always my favorite part. Here are some of the test knits done, I will add more as I get permission from the rest of my team.

nvscrapper

RavinRed

crowyhead

Indulgence

finasc

Every time a tester would finish and post pictures my mouth would literally drop. It's amazing to see your own concept made in different colorways and ideas, it makes every single project unique and beautiful and I just love this process! I hope to design more projects like this soon, it was amazingly fun!

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Blankets by Grandma

My Grandma Mitzi makes these GORGEOUS baby blankets for her great grandkids. I have a green one for Ethan, a pink one for Cadie, a yellow one for Jo, and now a blue one for Charlie. The blue one is a beautiful new pattern she did with little sheep on it, and I love it! I had to make sure and take pictures of Charlie with it.

(Charlie is in awe of the stitches...)

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