Adventures in Mommy-hood

 When people ask me how our Memorial weekend camping trip was, they tend to look at me funny when I tell them that it was cold and rainy and we had a great time.  Truthfully, I almost can't believe it myself.  I mean, it was cold (40 degrees) and rainy, which usually would not make me a very happy camper.  Maybe I've grown as a person or something.

We had a great campsite--this cliff was just a few feet from where we set up our tent, and the boys spent quite a bit of time climbing.


Bubby climbed, too, because he has to do everything the brothers do.   Which meant that mom and dad did a lot of climbing, too, although honestly, I'm not quite sure what I could have done if he'd actually fallen, other than cushioning his fall when he knocked us both off.

On Saturday, we climbed "our" cliff, then the one behind it, and came to a path, which led us to this fallen tree.  More climbing.  And there was yet a third cliff to climb behind that.  When I took this picture, I was hoping that Sawblock would get out of the shot, but his height adds perspective, which is good, yes?

 

Also on Saturday, we took a hike down by the St. Louis River.  It was gorgeous.

After walking over a swinging bridge and admiring the river for a while, we set off to find a serial geocache in the park.

 Here's Bubby, consulting the map before we set out (is this seriously not just the cutest thing you've seen all week?). 

 Just for the record, I saw this birdhouse when we first arrived in the area, considered, and immediately discarded it as a geocache location, thinking the park people wouldn't want us to disturb the birdies.  Those sneaky park people!  It was a fake birdhouse!

The next cache was on the back of this trail map sign, cleverly disguised as the back of a trail map sign.

Our third stop was a cache hidden in a hollowed-out, hinged log.  Very creative, park people: I'm impressed.

We found the last cache.  We then sat on a bench and watched some other poor fools try to find it :)  Good times!

What's kind of fun about the Minnesota State Parks geocache safari is each park has its own collectible wildlife card hidden in the final cache, picturing an animal the park is known for.  This one was particularly fun, because in addition to giving us puzzles to solve in each cache in order to get the coordinates for the next cache, they gave us a clue to the wildlife's identity.  We had a great time guessing on the way.  And no one guessed correctly.  I won't tell you what it is, 'cause I don't want to spoil the surprise.

Funny story: there had been a note posted for geocachers telling us not to go down a certain way, because although we could get to the next cache that way, we would have to bushwhack to get to it.  So, we dutifully turned around, and went the other, non-bushwhack-y way.  However, on the way back, we didn't want to backtrack, so we went up the way they told us not to go down.

MC was carrying a stick at this point, and every time he saw some shrubbery, he would hit it with the stick.  After a while, Sawblock noticed this strange behavior and politely inquired about it, to which MC replied, "I'm bushwhacking."  Um, MC, you don't have to actually whack the bushes unless they're in your path.

  *Chuckle*

That's so like him, though: he's a very literal kid.  Gotta be careful what you say around him.

Don't tell him I told you, 'cause he'll just give you that look he has, trust me.

OK, so there's more (we're not even through Saturday yet), but I thought 10 pics was enough for one post, so you'll just have to wait for the rest...

**Special note to people who read my blog via email: with all of those pictures in there, the formatting is a little funky, and I'm not quite sure how that will translate to email.  If it looks weird or is too hard to read, you can just go to my blog (http://bluefield5.blogspot.com/) to read it.