Stories from the Duke Family

Friday, May 13, 2011

Treasure Hunt

In the past few months we have discovered geocaching. And tonight was our first real attempt - a warm up really at finding some local geocaches. As we will be traveling quite a bit this summer, we want to have a little experience finding them, so we started tonight in our own neck of the woods.

Jamey, Stephen and I set off to find three. And we are back home again after finding only 1. But that is a start, right? The first one was a bust completely. We didn't realize we could look for hints until we left the first site, so we may go back to that one. The second one was near an intersection we literally pass 5-7 times a week - maybe more. Here is a picture of our first find.

Stephen was thrilled. A real live treasure hunt. I was a little worried that he would be a tad upset that the "treasure" was an old pill bottle. But when we opened it up and he helped to write our last name - he was hooked. So the 2nd stop of the night was a success.

By the time we reached our third stop, it was really too dark to see anything. We are pretty sure the geocache was hanging in a tree, but as I had no interest in feeling around in the edge of the forest in the dark, we decided to postpone that search in favor of some ice cream. So no find at that stop. Or so we thought.

Stephen talking to his mawmaw on the phone as we drove home tonight:

Stephen: "We founded two treasure Mawmaw. Two real live treasure. The first one was a secret paper map that we writed our names on. The other one was real FIREFLIES. Like on Princess and the Frog. Real fireflies and there were so many, there were more than 35 or even 38. So many, Mawmaw. you would not believe it."

And guess what, he is right!! There were hundreds of fireflies at that last stop. (Which by the way, was the woods near Mobile Greyhound Park - would I have ever stopped there in a million years? NOPE) While we didn't find the geocache at the last stop, we found a different treasure. A sign that a southern summer was on its way.

Pretty successful first outing and we are looking forward to more.

PS - Thanks to the PASSMORE family for letting us in on the FUN!

Sunday, May 8, 2011

Ansley says ADIOS to training wheels!

Video by Jamey

Tuesday, May 3, 2011

Woot-beard and White Witches

The drink of choice for both of my children would be root beer when given a choice. Although Stephen has just now started to like any drink that is carbonated. Ansley has loved it for a long time. But of course, as I want their teeth to be healthy (and I don't want to fork over $500 at the pediatric dentist) I try to limit the amount of any soda.

Root beer is some pretty good stuff, I must admit. And I am sure I will also enjoy periodically over the rest of my lifetime - but I will not ever be able to drink a root beer without hearing The Boy call his rootbeer a "woot-beard". That's right - add a letter d to the end of it, change that R to a W, and you have got about the cutest way to pronounce rootbeer ever.

Soon enough that letter d will be gone. Soon enough he will pronounce things as they should be. What a sad thought. Sad and, not so sad I suppose. Isn't that the whole idea? To have kids, raise them and then watch them grow up? They don't tell you this part in the manual you get for raising kids when you leave the hospital. Wait - there was no manual. Which must the reason I am trying to figure this whole thing out as it happens. The reason I am watching Stephen fight the White Witch from The Lion the Witch and the wardrobe and trying to memorize this moment.
It will be gone soon enough - these moments of great pretend. These moments of wootbeard, white witches and other magical things. So I am glad I am here now. And I am thankful for that.