Geocaching, Hiking

Greenleaf State Park , Geocaching, and Snakes…

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My darling husband (I think I shall call him that from now on) and I took are two little rascals to Greenleaf State Park near Muskogee, OK.

We have not Geocached in a long time so we thought we would look up some caches this time.

What is Geocaching you ask?

Pretend like you asked…

It is when you use a GPS to find treasure…

That is what I tell my boys at least.

The less exciting version is:

Someone puts a water proof container (box, ammo can, film canister) in a location (mostly parks but they are sometimes just on the side of the road) and then puts the location up on the Internet. You then get the location, enter it into your GPS device, and try to find what they have hidden.

The bigger caches (containers) hold little trinkets that you can trade another trinket of the same value for.

Here is one of the caches we found (I actually found this one!). It was right in front of me and I just happened to look at it but that is just a technicality…

This is my oldest trading his car for some lego’s.

Warning:

If you have boys and you tell them they are pirates looking for treasure they may think they have to defend it.

Sorry to anyone that met us on the trail and my boys tried to attack you…

This cache was located here.

I saw it and said, “this is Oklahoma, you don’t hide things is a big rock pile. There are snakes.”

Sometimes I wish I was wrong…

This closer shot is courtesy of my darling husband(that nickname is really growing on me).

He was looking for the cache when I hear, “hmm”.

I know what that sound means.

So I very anxiously asked, “what?”

He said that he thinks he found a Cottonmouth and to bring him the camera.

I did, because I am odd like that.

How close was he you ask?

I stayed a little farther back.

One of us needed to live for the children’s sake.

I thought I should end with something pretty to maybe help you forget the snake.

 

You can find more information about Geocaching at geocaching.com

Not all the caches have snakes guarding them. I promise!

DIY/Crafts, Personal

Fingerprint Tree Art

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I knew when I saw this that I wanted to do one with my boys!

And since they hate to get messy it was a real struggle to convince them to dip their fingers in paint.

Right…

First I sketched out a tree.

I just did a google search for tree sketches to be inspired in the design, you could copy one or even find a coloring page to use.

I tried to not put too much work into this sketch since I knew that the boys might decided to ruin it and smear the whole thing with paint.

I used acrylic paint for the “leaves” but you could use an ink pad.

I used one color of  green acrylic and then just added a little bit of white, yellow and “gasp” black(my art teacher would not be happy with me) to get the different shades.

I had the boys each do a side of the tree so as to keep the process peaceful.

Not that my boys would ever fight over something like painting…

They are practically perfect in every way.

I love works of fiction, don’t you?

I then had them use toothpicks to add grass, I thought it needed something on the bottom but you would not have to do this.

I like toothpicks because it is hard to go crazy with them, you only can do a little bit of paint at a time.

My oldest loved mixing the colors the most.

Done!

I can’t wait to hang it in my livingroom!