Geocaching Twins

Greetings friends and family,

It seems to be feast or famine around here when it comes to Daddy time with the dynamic duo.  Kendra's week has been filled with shopping for clothes, getting to know a new friend, and many hours of church time.  I can't explain anything now, but she may have 15 seconds (and i'm not exaggerating) of TV fame in a few months.

My famine of Daddy time is over.  Here comes the flood!  I've been hanging out with Easton and Layla (and sometimes friends) many hours over the past week or so.  Their friend Kayla came over for a visit while her mom and Kendra went out shopping.  Their "I'm hungry" chorus became so loud that I had to remedy it with a snack.  I chopped up apples, a pineapple, bananas and blackberries.  I gave out a single toothpick to each without any instructions.  They quickly realized the pure enjoyment of fruit kabobs.  It's fresh, healthy, cold, and fills empty tummies.

 I introduced the twins to geocaching.  The idea is to use GPS to locate hidden treasures.  leave a trinket, take a trinket, and sign the log book to indicate when you found it and who you are.  There are over 2 million geocaches documented in the US.

They each took a toy and I took my camelbak with gatorade and snacks.  We headed out to South Mountain where I knew a few geocaches existed.  On the trail they were literally running up the mountain.  We made record time to the fourth peak and went further than we've ever gone before.  On the way we identified cacti.  They have a healthy fear of cacti, but we stopped to interact with one.  We stopped and I said, "I'll show you how to touch this cactus because this one has only a few huge needles, not hundreds of tiny ones."  They backed away with eyes wide open and I showed them it is not dangerous to touch the cactus if you know where and how and which ones are safe.  After seeing me do it with no pain or blood they slowly put their tiny finger on the side of one big needle.  Their judgment against all cacti was obliterated and now they understand what is ok and not ok.

There is a lesson in there somewhere.  My job as a dad is not to keep them from the world, but to help them properly relate to and interact with it.  I could easily have just said, "all cacti are evil and will kill you!"   However, when they get older and realize I was lying then it brings into question everything else I tell them. It's a matter of integrity and character.  I want them to trust me and my advice.  That only happens as my input is proven over time.

Anyway, this next picture is a good perspective of how steep the mountain peaks are.  Easton and Layla were scrambling up like warriors!

We arrived at the place where the GPS signal indicated.  After 5 minutes of looking around in the rock piles we found it!  An ammo can barely showing in a pile of rocks.  We opened it to find a bunch of useless junk, but the fun of it was adding our useless junk to theirs and taking something new home.  I let them write their names in the log book and then we re-hid the secret stash.

On our way back we stopped at the top and I took this panoramic of the twins with the city and park behind them.  This was one of their favorite hikes ever and I foresee many geocaching trips in our near future.

While at church one of the many times over the past few weeks I asked, "where is Layla?"  Someone pointed to the large grassy water retention area.  I looked over to see Layla rolling down the slope.  Not exactly play clothes, but she was having such a gleeful time I didn't bother stopping her.  I waited patiently at the bottom where the drainage pipe is.  I asked to take a picture of her having fun and she posed like this:

She's had more pictures taken of her in 6 years of life than most people get in 90 years of life.  It shows in her posing ability.

During one of our evenings together I took the twins out to the greenbelt to unwrap one of their birthday gifts.  It is this game where you throw this rope with a ball on each end towards the pvc pipe structure and try to get it to wrap around the pipes.

I liken it to horseshoes for kids.  They had a blast.  We played until the sun went down and they were asking to continue.  I even heard them ask when we could play again after we went inside for bed time.  For birthday gifts we don't give them the entire lot at one time.  We give them a few toys here and there to space it out over the course of a few months.  Seems to work out much better that way instead of just giving the entire lot of gifts at one time.

And it other news...  The Megablocks Space Shuttle is coming along nicely!  Easton is really coming along well with his math and ability to follow directions.  He's also taking the lead now in working through the steps.  Now when I say, "get me four white 6x2 skinny pieces" He dives towards the zip lock bags of pieces and in mere seconds places the pieces on the table in front of me.  Not only that, he completed a few steps all by himself!  The first wing is done.  One more to go.  We are on step 147 out of 188 (or so).  This boy is determined.

He's also a lot like me.  He came into our room at 7:15am like he always does.  He was dressed for school, had his bed made, and prepared his backpack for class.  I rubbed the crust from my eyes and noticed Easton's outfit.  I thought, "Hey, I can match that!"  So I went to my closet and he helped me pick out as close of an outfit as we could get.  Right down to the Chuck Taylor Converse shoes (thanks to Logan and Bree).  By the way, Layla took these pics of Easton and I.

Kendra was busy packing lunches and getting ready so I had her take a few shots of us being silly together.  He would make a face and a body position.  Then I would mimic him.  It was harder than you think because we were both laughing so much together.

Lucky for me, I have a job where I can show up at work with this outfit and nobody notices or cares because everyone dresses like this.  dressing up at work means a button down shirt and jeans.  anything more than that and people will ask, "are you interviewing for a new job?"  Seriously.  It's that kind of culture.  Reason number 593 that I love my work environment.  The 4 Webbs are highly favored.  I don't take that for granted in the slightest little bit.

See you soon!