Thanksgiving, Seahawks vs. 49ers and a Go Pro

This year, like the previous years, Thanksgiving has been spent at my aunt and uncle's house in Tumwater.  I invited Trish and Amy to our dinner because Trish felt it might be weird to go over to her inlaw's.  I told her she can do whatever she wanted to and to know that the invite was there.  Ben came off of a fire station shift so he was tired and did manage to get up in time to meet me at the Walmart in Tumwater so we didn't have a gazillion cars in their driveway...especially a giant truck.

We got there about 2:30 after turning around twice earlier.  Trish and Amy were stuck in Lakewood traffic and would arrive as soon as they could.  They ended up getting there not too far after we did.  Meanwhile, Ben and I worked on our turkey arts and crafts and everyone got dinner ready and did some visiting.  I finished mine and then later had to finish Ben's.  I gave mine to Grammie and he gave his to his mom.  Gobble gobble!

As soon as everyone was there, we gorged on food and told some really weird stories...like we always do.  Somehow the conversation always leads to poop or similar to poop.  We always have to remind Grammie to do less talking and more eating.  Historically, she is always the only one still eating when everyone is done.  She tried her hardest but always managed to find something to talk about.  As soon as we all had our fill, we got rid of our plates and such and met in the living room for a birthday party and pictionary.  We were too full for dessert.

It is hard to celebrate birthday's once fall hits so we celebrate them all together during Thanksgiving since we all know most of us will be there.  We celebrated September, October and November birthdays...Grammie, Dad, mom and me.  This year, we recognized Trish, her birthday is also in November and I thought it would be nice to get her a card to make her feel part of the family.  They all went beyond the card.  We sang, opened presents, took pictures and Kevin took video of everything.  We started a rousing game of pictionary while some of us had pie.

Ben and I had this plan to go to Best Buy and purchase a Go Pro because it was $100 cheaper and it included a lot of free accessories.  Why not right?  We all left around 6ish, some of us went home, some of us went home to watch the Seahawk game and some of us went and started our Christmas shopping.  We were suppose to go hang out with Ben's friend Josh but that fell through at the last min.

We got to Best Buy and expected to be disappointed...the doors opened at 5 and we got there about a hour and a half later.  I dropped him off and found a parking spot which turned out to be an awesome parking spot.  I walked in and he already was buying the Go Pro.  We just now own a Go Pro!  I was stoked.  We stayed and chatted with the sales rep for a bit.  Then we wandered the mall a bit and then got bored.  We took our stuff to the car and decided to watch the rest of the Seahawk-49er game at Pints and Quarts.  We had a beer and watched the game with the rest of the people.  The game was actually played pretty good for once.  We held them to only 3 points but should have capitalized on the turnovers with touchdowns instead of field goals.  We got the win on our end with 19.  The rest of the season depends on how we stand at the end....playoffs or not.

Because Josh canceled, we went back into Tumwater and went inside the Walmart just to see how insane it still was.  It was disappointing.  We found a few things just because they were on sale and very discounted.  I bought a new camera tripod because mine broke last spring and you can never have too many $4 sweatpants.  It was only 9 so I followed Ben to Rochester and back to the station.  There, we played Ninja Dice, ate apple pie and drank beer.  It was a nice end to Thanksgiving.  Until next year!

Next Adventure:  South Hill, Orting and the Puyallup River

Puzzles and Muiltis, a Hawks Prairie Adventure

I had three days off this week and I wanted to make them count since it isn't raining at the moment.  I haven't geocached at all this month so I called Bev the other day to see if her and Bob wanted to go somewhere and get a few.  Going down to Oregon was thrown around, Orting Valley was thrown around and even Lacey and Oly were thrown around.  It just depended on what Bob felt like doing.  She texted me the next day saying we were going to pick up a few puzzled in the area we've been staring at, that we can't solve, for years.  Bev had gotten some help with them from various people.

I got my stuff ready the night before. I knew it was going to be cold so I put out all of my warm clothes.  I set my alarm for 7:30 because they were going to be here around 8.  That night around 3:30 I woke up to my room smelling like smoke.  I got up really fast and checked to see if it was coming from my room...it wasn't.  Then I heard mom walk down the hallway because she smelt it from their room.  I got out and wandered the house with mom holding flashlights.  We could not find anything that would suggest the amount of smoke that was in the house except for the pellet stove.  It had to be coming from there.  Dad got up and aired out the house.  Of course it was 20 degrees outside so the whole house was colder but it got the smoke out and some of the smell.  They turned the stove off and we all went back to bed.  I had to sleep with my window open because of the smell.  It was cold.

My alarm went off at 7:30 and I immediately turned my heater on and started putting my clothes on.  My room was probably 25 degrees.  I was freezing.  I made sure I had everything and they rolled down the driveway at exactly 8:00.  I hopped in the car and we drove to Denny's for breakfast.  We all ordered the $4 everyday Grand Slam.  We chatted and enjoyed our food.

The first one we had on the list took us to the RAC for a cache called Trapped in a Bottle (GC5D1XF).  We were not prepared for this cache.  We parked and walked towards the patch of trees on the north side of the park.  We searched for a brown 4 foot long PVC pipe and Bev spotted it first.  It took us a while to get the top of the PVC pipe apart because it was frozen.  We got the lid off and saw the thing we had to get the log out of.  It was a plastic bottle that contained the bison tube log book but we had to take the stick, nuts and bolts off of it before we could get the log book.

But how do we access the nuts and bolts?  We had to phone a friend.

After talking to our source, we had an idea on how we were going to tackle this cache.  Since it was really cold out that morning we took the bottle to the car to do.  We needed a strip of paper to stick up to wrap around the nut and turn it until it fell off.  It took a little trial and error to actually get the nut off.  Once I did, pulled the bolt out and the stick I celebrated in the back of the car!   I handed Bev the log book.  Now putting it back together...

It was really frustrating.  It was a good thing that they bottle was plastic or it would have been impossible.  I had to get the bolt sideways, pinch it and some how get the bolt through the stick.  That took a couple of tries to do.  Once I did, getting the nut on it was even harder.  When I did get it on and pressed up against the bottle to keep it on.  I found out by using friction on the nut and bottle I could screw it on.  Once I got it threaded on, I stuck the strip of paper back up, wrapped it around the nut and tightened it so it wouldn't  come off for the next set of cachers.  We returned it to its hiding place.

The next cache was a multi on the other side of I-5 called BQCSD ZOXBS VLVNU QWTYD RSZ (GC4FMH5).  It was an enigma based cache using ciphers.  We parked the car and got out.  It started warming up a bit but still cold.  Someone had cut a bunch of trees down for surveying.  We had hoped they didn't disturb the cache.  We looked and looked and upon further investigation, after I had walked past it twice, Bev found the log with the pull bottle inside of it.

 We moved onto the next one, Pythagorean Theorem (GC316F8) but chose the wrong side of the trail.  We ended up walking a half a mile to the other block to retrieve it.  Meanwhile during the walk, I grabbed A Christmas Cache (GC43N9H) and Where the Heck is Wall Drug? (GC3P2C3) since Bob and Bev already have both of them.

And then Bev took a tumble on a sheet of ice.  The side of her foot barely touched the ice, she slipped, fell and rolled onto her side.  At first I didn't know what happened becasue it happened so quickly. We helped her out and she walked it off.  She is a really tough lady.

We got to the end of the trail and Bob decided to send us to the cache while he walked back to the car to meet us at the corner where the rock wall was.  Bev and I got to the rock wall that contained the cache and found it within seconds.  Some rock walls take a bit while others do not.  I pulled out the container and we celebrated with a high five.

 We waited for Bob to show up in the car.  He did after a few minutes and then went to the next closest one, Ganoderma (GC2ZFKZ), another multi cache.  We had help with this one too so we just walked ourselves across this grassy field and through a hold in the fence into the woods.  We followed Bob through the brush.  We reached a broken tree and ground zero.  We looked for a film canister and based on the hint it was suppose to be hanging from the broken tree.  I looked down for a few seconds and spotted the film canister.  "Found it!  But I don't think it's suppose to be here."  We had Bev sign it and Bob and I put it back into the broken tree.

We walked back to the car and headed over to Cabela's.  Bob had to exchange some binoculars and they had to get a present for their in-law Will.  Bev and I walked around the store for a bit while Bob stood in the customer service line.  Bev mentioned some sort of device that takes deer's buttholes out of the carcass.  I laughed.  She said that it was real so we went looking for it.  Several helpers and minutes later, we found it in the archery accessories.  Low and behold...a deer butthole ripper outer!

They found a gift for Will and I found a Christmas present for my dad.  We paid and started heading home but stopped at Taco Time because there is always time for tacos.  They dropped me off at home and they had to get ready for a birthday party at Red Robin later on.  It was a fun chilly day and I was so glad to get some caching in.

Next Adventure: Thanksgiving, Seahawks vs. 49ers and a Go Pro

My 31st Birthday and Buffalo Wild Wings

Today is my 31st birthday and just saying that makes me seem old.  I don't feel old or look that old but it does make me seem old when I say it out loud.   Anyway, I try and have a get together with all of my friends because my birthday has fallen on weekdays and it is really hard to get everyone together due to schedules.

Ben and I spent the day hanging out and on our way to town, we stopped by Grammie's house to help her with her digital camera and why she can't tape her shows from her new cable box.  We figured out the digital camera problem but not the cable box problem.  She sang happy birthday to me and about an hour later, we were on our way to the West Side.

Ben called Buffalo before hand to see if they would set aside a table for us and about 12 other people.  They said they would have it ready for us when we got there.  We rolled in about 5 and had to wait a few minutes while they set it up.  Thursday night football was also on and I worried we wouldn't get a table for all of us.  The Dolphins battled it out with the Bills and prevailed.  Miami's quarterback was on my fantasy football team and he better score a few touchdowns tonight!

Shortly after we sat down, Shauna came.  We ordered appetizers and beer.  We thought we should wait until most of the guests arrived before we actually ordered food.  Celeste, David, Patrick and Lance showed up a few minutes later.  Celeste made me a Cougar cake and cut herself opening up the gray sprinkles.  It turned out pretty cool plus a card with some magnets in it her mom Kathy made for me.  I opened Shauna's present and Ben's present.  Shauna got me a Seahawk decal for the car and a Cougar shirt, Ben got me seasons 8 and 9 of Bones and an old person plastic hard hat that said caution old person.  So hilarious Ben!

Lindsay, Justin, Megan, Matt and Mason soon joined.  We knew Nicole would be there late due to work.  We all ordered our food while I opened some more presents.  Lindsay got me a It Happened in Washington book and Justin got me some chocolate.  Megan, Matt and Mason got me a journal and a stuffed animal abominable snowman character from Rudolph.  Nicole arrived after wandering around for a bit trying to find us, her phone didn't work so it was a gamble.  She got me a card with a BWW gift card inside.  We ate our food, laughed, told jokes, met everyone and just had a great time.  This was the biggest turn out to date.

I got my free dessert which was chocolate cake and ice cream.  I shared some with who ever wanted any.  It got to be that time.  The game got over and my quarterback got me 16 points and everyone decided to head home since it was a Thursday night and everyone had to work the next day.  We thanked everyone for coming and we all left.  Ben and I had to go to the store to get milk on the way home.  I stayed up way to late that night and paid for it in the morning.  You're only 31 once right?!  Haha!

Next Adventure:  Puzzles and Muiltis, a Hawks Prairie Adventure

My New Shop Gym

Last fall I had to move my weight set/bench out of the extra room we had so we could make room for a bed when Erika and Malachi came home.  I was really sad.  I definitely missed having a place to work out that I didn't have to pay for or drive somewhere to use it. 

Ben came over and helped me move it from the room over to Grandma's out building, where it remained for almost a year.  Just the other day I went over there and moved the set to the shop, mostly so I could use it and to prevent further weather damage to it...since it was in an out building.

I got all the equipment wiped down and ready to go.  I just have to find a routine and start working out.