Birthday Weekend Recap

First of all: Thank you to everyone who wished me a happy birthday! Facebook really brings people together, huh? :o)

How did I spend my birthday? Well, I was lucky enough to celebrate my special day 3 days! And here is a brief recap of everything:

On Thursday, my actual birthday, we made a point to take Brylee to storytime at the library again. It has been the first time to go since they started up again on January 10, and of course Brylee was very excited to be there. This time, there were a total of 3 families there, the other two we had never been with before. After the storytime, Brylee walked around, being silly and showing her personality. One of the little girls was sitting in the middle of the room, not moving, but just taking everything in. Brylee walked up to her, bowed towards her and started talking at her...really loudly. All of the parents in the room cracked up. It was almost as if Brylee had approached someone who spoke another language, and the louder you talk, the more likely they will understand you. What a silly girl!










Brylee loves her 'boons', and the one from her birthday had finally met its deflated end, so for my birthday, I bought her another balloon, which we clipped to her as she walked around her t-ma and b-pa's house.













I don't know what has happened to me, as I have seemed to leave my camera behind quite a bit lately. On Saturday, we had a game night, which was preceeded by a geo-caching afternoon, introducing geo-caching to interested people, or just helping them get more caches under their beginner belts.

The geo-caching party consisted of: Dad, Cary, Bill, Whitney, her mom Shirley, my cousin Stacy, and myself. With 7 people, we decided to split into 2 groups to hunt a total of 6 caches, which of course, with mine and Cary's help, turned into a competition. Stacy, Cary and I made one group, while dad led the others.

Stacy is trying to earn a geo-caching merit badge with the Girl Scouts, so Cary and I took her to the locations where the caches were and she helped search. We finished before everyone else, finding a cache that had been 'disassembled' by people or animals, changing one cache to another one (which was more difficult), and even stopping by my dad's office to try to find the reported-missing Pootwaddle cache...which we excitedly found!

The evening ended with pizza, Sort It Out, Wii, and just lots of fun!










Sunday morning brought Cary and I back to my parents' house where we met Bill for church. He has been checking out churches and last weekend went to Fellowship, and this week we changed it up a little and took him to Live Oak with Pastor Brad.













It was adorable to walk into the church and watch Brylee walk herself into her room that she typically goes to. She met another little girl and became instant 'friends' (well, as much of friends as toddlers are), and later shared the room with a little boy.










After church, we parted ways with Bill and my parents and Cary, Brylee and I drove out to Cary's parents house, where the day was to be spent with Brad, Faith, and Helen to celebrate my birthday. Bring on the cheese casserole and strawberry cake!

What a fun day! I love this family: they love to tell stories (and twisting the truth around in some very funny cases), play games (we taught Brad, Faith, and Helen how to play Scribblish), and have a lot of fun! Brylee adores her cousin Helen, and I loved seeing the familiar smile come on her face when Helen walked in the door!
































The presents I walked away with this year (and yet again feel like I don't deserve them!):

From the hubby:









I won't go to sleep at night until I do a full hunt on a page...I have loved I Spy for years, and I am FINALLY the proud owner of 2 books! I can't wait for Brylee to be old enough to go through them with me again!

From my parents:



















Yes, Brylee did receive shoes and shirts for my birthday, and I wouldn't have it any other way. The little girl loved getting her special flashy shoes and walking through the mall with them on. She even tried to refuse to have her hand held, and loved to stop walking just to see the shoes sparkle!

From Brad, Faith, and Helen:









We found out tonight that it makes great hamburgers!

And from Brenda and Gary:












The long-desired bird feeder! I have been wanting one for several months now, and can't wait to buy the bird seed and get it up!

I had a wonderful birthday, and thank you to everyone who yet again made it special. I couldn't ask for a better life!

The Funniest Geocaching Adventure Yet...

My parents decided on a popular restaurant today for lunch, so Cary and I met them there. As we pulled into a parking spot at the restaurant, Cary pointed at a lightpole and wondered out loud, "Is there a cache in there?" I laughed, knowing that we have checked the area before and there is not one there...

When I got out of the car, I looked and saw that Cary pulled up the skirt to the lightpole and there was a container. I was wrong!

When we opened the container to sign the log, we noticed that it was a brand new log...and when dad and Cary tried to find it on their GPS and Android apps, it was not there. This means that the cache had been placed there and is waiting to be 'published'...or to become public to the geocaching world.

What a hilarious situation! We randomly looked at a location for a cache, found one, and then it even hasn't been made public yet! We have laughed about it all day long. It is a very random thing, something that doesn't happen everyday...I wonder how many times it has happened in the last 10 years (how long geocaching has been popular)...

Being Sneaky

Tonight Cary's and my 3rd geocache published while we were in Southlake. This cache is called chestmutt- 5 a.m. wake up call, a tribute to our daughter's birth.

I had mentioned to Cary that it would be fun to stake out the cache when it published to watch people come and retrieve it and just see how it all went about. You know, see things from a different perspective. So once we saw that the cache had published, we drove from Southlake to Lewisville, just hoping that it hadn't been touched before we got there.

Once we were there, we found a parking space in the dark with a great view and sat there, giddy with excitement. And sat there...and sat there....

After about 45 minutes of sitting there, getting excited every time we saw a car turn the corner and then feel the adrenaline drop again after it kept going, Cary checked to see if anyone had signed the log yet. Nope. Still waiting to be found by anyone but us.

Just as we pulled into another parking spot and pulled out stories about geocaching, we got a text from my dad stating he was on his way to grab it. We were getting silly about how we would approach him as he retrieved the log...something we probably would not do if it were anyone else but him.

Finally the big moment arrived and he and mom (and Brylee) show up to ground zero. After he grabbed the cache, and went back to the car to sign it, we pulled up into the parking space in front of ground zero.

It was fun to 'run into them' at 9:15 at night, however, we were also caught in the joke when we discovered that dad had seen with one of his handy Android apps that we were in the area...making it no surprise that we were there to see them.

I know for anyone who does not geocache this story might not be all that funny, and perhaps confusing, but it was fun. It was sweet to get to kiss my little one good night one more time tonight, in front of the building where she was born, almost 1 year ago. It was nice to talk to my mom and get to hug my dad, and hopefully create more fun memories to laugh at in the future.

What a fun (and cold!) evening!