New Year's Eve with Fireworks

Every year we decide who was going to host, what kind of food and games we were going to do.  This year we were all going over to Matt and Megan's house because they wanted to host and I had some fireworks left over from last July we needed to blow up.  I figured we couldn't blow them up at Nicole, Lindsay or my house so that left Celeste's and Megan's.  We chose Megan's.

We also decided that we were going to do our traditional "around the world" NYE traditions.  That included, grapes, black eyed peas, lentils, marzipan, champagne, ringed food, wishes, matches, the color of your underwear, stepping on the right food at midnight etc.  We all had it down to a T since this was like the 5th year we've been doing this.

We all made food as well.  Nicole made a French dessert and little smokies, I brought rice krispy ring, grapes, chips and dip, pigs in a blanket, ciders, beer and soda.  Megan's friend Sam brought meatballs and Megan made Italian wedding soup.  We had baked mozzarella on tomatoes, a chex mix, various sparkling cider and more chips and dips.  We definitely had enough food for everyone.

We got there, settled in, ate food, hung out, got reacquainted with Sam and met his girlfriend and started in on some of the board games Nicole and Del brought.  We were deserted on an island and we had to survive each night or we ate someone.  This game actually was pretty long so it took up most of the time.

By about 11:30 we had all prepped our stuff for midnight.  There were quite a few things we had to get ready including writing down our wishes for 2018.  I won't type down what I actually wished for but I really wanted 2018 to be better than 2017.  2017 was a pretty hard year for us.  Matt tried to find one of our local news stations to watch on the TV through the phone to know when midnight actually was for Pacific time.  Plus we got to watch the Space Needle and fireworks for a few minutes.

The countdown began.  5....4....3....2....1...HAPPY NEW YEAR!  Everyone gave their people midnight kisses and we ate our weird concoctions, set our wishes on fire and drank them...you had to do all of this in the first minute of midnight.

Since it was cold, we all bundled up and we all went outside to watch Matt and I blow up the rest of my 4th of July fireworks.  He got us a board and we set up the tubes accordingly by their bon fire pit.  We shot them out away from the house.  I told everyone just to brace themselves just in case some of them don't do what they are suppose to do.  We always have one that surprises us.  We lit as many as we had tubes for which was about three when they all were lit at the same time.  The fireworks were so awesome to look at in the clear starry sky.  Near the end we did have one blow up sooner than it was suppose to and scared everyone to the point where we were hiding behind cars in her driveway.  That sure got the adrenaline flowing.  I sure wasn't cold after that!

When we went back inside Miles was not too happy about getting woken up by the noise outside.  Megan had to rock him back to sleep.  We gathered up all of our stuff, thanked Megan and Matt for hosting and headed back into Lacey.

When we got home we took our traditional picture with my cat and our NYE picture props.

It was so late we decided just to go to bed.  I could not wait to sleep in.

Next Adventure:  Ben's Car Accident

Grays Harbor Cache Machine II

I saw there was an upcoming cache machine and it was going to be in the Grays Harbor area.  I haven't been to a cache machine since 2013 mostly because of my transportation, the job I had (I worked my weekends away) and not making very much money.  I really wanted to go to more but the timing wasn't available because of Ben's job and then it eventually turned into not having enough extra money to go.  We could manage this one.  We weren't doing anything and the weather was suppose to be dry.

About a month ago I asked Brenda and Ray if they wanted to do the cache machine and they said they really wanted to and since it was near us so for now their answer was maybe and they would let us know as the date got closer.  I was super excited to go cache machine caching again.  It has been way too long.

A week before we made plans with Ray. He asked if they could come up on Friday night and have dinner with us (we decided on pizza and salad), stay the night with us (in our open guest room) and head out early Saturday morning towards the coast and Aberdeen with Ben and I.  They would leave from the event and head home afterwards.  

Two days before I got an email from Ray canceling it because it was suppose to rain all day Saturday.  I was disappointed because I was looking forward to it.  I told Ben the news and also added that we were going to go anyway but not as early in the morning because I already had some of them and we had some other stuff we had to do before we headed west.

The night before I got out all of the stuff we would need and made a list of caches to grab while we were there.  I stuffed everything in my adventure back pack.  I grabbed a few containers, bags and logs and also put them in the Escape just in case we had to do maintenance on some of the caches while we were out.  I told Ben he had to be ready and have eaten by 10:30 because that's when we were going to leave.  He agreed.

The alarm went off around 9ish, we got up, ate cereal, packed up the rest of the stuff we would need for the day, the recycle, the stuff we borrowed for Christmas from mom and dad and was in the Escape by 10:30.  We headed into Rainier.

We stopped at the recycle first and dropped off our stuff.  We then headed out to my parent's house to drop off the dishes and cookers that we borrowed from them at Christmas time.  It was a short visit because we were headed out.  I stopped by grandma's house to drop off a couple of things as well before we left town.  We left Rainier at about 11:30 and headed towards Aberdeen via Hwy 12.  We were going to pick up caches on the way towards Aberdeen.  I had a bunch along Hwy 12 between Oakville and Elma I still had to get.

Our first stop was Welcome to Capital Forest (GC56K24).  When we pulled off of the road and parked in front of the sign, we knew it was going to be on or near the sign somewhere.  I had Ben look for it.  We signed our names, put it back and got ready for the next cache.

Mystery History (GCN2C3) was up the road a ways on the left hand side at a large pullout where you could spend some time fishing on the Chehalis River.  There was also a large spot where a building once stood.  It is now a slab of weathered concrete.  We parked the Escape and walked over the gate and near ground zero.  This one was also at the sign.  I had to go get some pliers to get the log book out.  We signed the log and put it back where we found it.  On the way back to the Escape, unfortunately I stepped in some dog poop and it took a while to get out of the treads of my shoe.  Why can't people pick up after their dog?

We got back onto Hwy 12.  A few miles up the road was another pull out this time for the C-Line.  There used to be a series that followed the C-Line but at the time I could not do it and then it was archived.  However, one did survive.  This was placed by a different cacher, C-Line A Nice Drive (GC1620G). 

We parked off the side just in case a logging truck came down and wandered around trying to find out what tree crevasse it could be in.  The coords had us all over the place.  I stopped in the middle of the dirt road and let the GPS take me to the cache.  Found out we were in the wrong spot and eventually it took me to the right tree.  I was way off.  I signed the log and put it back.  This container has seen some wet weather over the years.

In Porter, a very small community off of Hwy 12, there was one cache I had not gotten the last time I came through this way...which was probably during the Lamprey Challenge.  Fire Me 15 Porter (GC4134R) was indeed at a fire station off the highway.  Smokey the Bear indicated there wasn't any fire danger today.  We started looking at the sign and all of a sudden we heard a bunch of turkeys cheering us on.  We found it very quickly even with the turkeys making noise at us.  We signed the log and put it back better than we found it.

We had to skip a cache because we weren't sure how to approach it on the cliff above Hwy 12 so we would have to figure it out next time we came through here.  We got closer to Elma and Ben scanned the map to see there was a cache ahead called Don't Even Try It (GC5KK87) and it was a 4.5/1.5.  I thought to myself, do we have time to waste on this one?  Ben wanted to at least try looking for it, he even exclaimed "challenge accepted!"  It took us to a restaurant called the Rusty Tractor and it had some cool decorations on the side of it.

We drove over to the cache location and knew it was going to be on one of the many tractors in this parking lot.  I gave us fifteen minutes to look for it.  If we didn't find it we would have to move on. We knew we didn't have to squat or bend over to look for it.  You really didn't have to climb on it unless you were short like I was.  I got up on the step and stood over the top of the engine part and started looking.  This one you must touch things to find out what doesn't belong.  I started to feel the different parts and as luck would have it, a magnetic screw moved.  Ben!  I found it!  We literally found it in less than two minutes.  We signed the tiny log with our initials and put it back exactly how we found it.

A little later on that afternoon I got a phone call from Abby (hydnsek) asking for a few hints on the tractor cache because I guess they were having trouble finding it.  I gave them a few hints without totally giving it away.  She thanked me and they did end up finding it when I checked the cache page when we got home.

I had Ben find the two letterboxes in town because I had several years ago, EMS (GC2B90K) and Teddy Bear's Christmas (GC2B963).

We drove south of Elma to pick up Old and New (GC2CAX5) which was in between an old bridge that wasn't being used and the new bridge that was currently being used.  It took us a while to pinpoint its exact location but we eventually found it after checking every section of guardrail in the middle of the bridge.  I was also glad this road wasn't very busy.  We signed the log and put it back.  Before we left I found a secluded place to pee.

We headed back towards town and stopped at Vance Creek Park to find Anna's Tree (GC4QVKN) which might have been missing but we brought some replacement stuff just in case it was.  We parked the Escape in the lot and walked around the small lake to the cache location.  We knew it would be in a tree next to the paved trail.  When we got there it should have been obvious on where it was hidden.  It was missing alright.  Ben and I assembled a replacement, signed our names and placed a pathtag inside for the next cacher.

Our next cache, Spirit Quest - Masonic Cemetery (GC5HJW8), was our first DNF for the day.  I'm sure it was there but we were led astray or we just were in the wrong area.  Our coords didn't yield a very good search area plus we checked all of the stumps like the hint had suggested and could not find anything so we moved on.  Meanwhile some weird teenage kids drove in and kinda made it creepy so we moved on.  When I got online to log it at home I saw that it indeed was missing so we weren't crazy after all.

Spirit Quest - St. Josephs Catholic Cemetery (GC5HJW5) was just right down the street from the last cemetery.  This was a quick park and grab and really didn't need the GPS because it was pretty obvious when we arrived.

We stopped at one more cemetery before moving on to Montesano.  Spirit Quest - Satsop Cemetery (GC4XG03) was another park and grab.  This time at an obvious stump with mushrooms growing out of it.

We made it into Montesano and stopped at Fleet Park (GC786KZ) and there we found our first set of cache machine cachers.  I wasn't sure if we were going to meet up with anyone until the event in Aberdeen.  Ben and I got out of the Escape and he exclaimed, "I wonder what they're doing?!"  As the group of cachers were trying to sign the log and be sneaky.  We asked how they were doing and they said pretty good since the weather held up for a December in Grays Harbor.  We signed the cache and handed it off to someone else.  Ben and I got back into the Escape and drove a quarter mile up the road for Kelsey Park (GC786M6).  We parked the Escape and noticed a little boy and his mom enjoying the playground.  We walked up the small hill to the stump and the little boy was curious.  We explained to his mom what we were doing and she said that sounded fun.  Unfortunately the cache had fallen inside the stump and we couldn't reach it.  I got a couple of tools out of the Escape to see if we could fix it.  After some persistence we got the container out and added some insurance to make sure it didn't happen again.  We let the cache owner know and they were totally cool with it.

I can't tell you how many times I've passed by this sign since I've been geocaching and never found the time to stop.  The most iconic landmark besides Kurt Cobain's childhood home would probably have to be the Welcome to Aberdeen sign, "come as you are."  Today we had time to grab Come As You Are (GC1ZXAF).  We saw in the logs that this one was missing.  I felt that we should replace it since there are several cachers in town that need to find this iconic one.  I got a container, a bag and a log and we hide it where we thought it went.  Ben wrote a message to the cache owner and we drove into Aberdeen to meet up with everyone at the cache machine dinner.

We got to the Mazatlán restaurant and walked across the street to grab one I had already gotten years ago at the fire station.  We walked inside the Mexican place and immediately was welcomed by several cachers we knew.  Annette, Pete, Chris and Deb were glad to see us.  I talked to them for a few minutes and then Bob and Bev moved to a booth so we could sit with them.  We talked about various things and told them why we've been so busy the past few months.  I think the last time I saw them was at the Edminster family 4th of July celebration at the lake.

Bob and Bev shared their food, I ordered enchiladas and a Pepsi, Ben got a burrito and a margarita.  While we waited for our food, TravisL talked about the logbook, which is most of the time a ketchup bottle, and talked about the upcoming cache machines.  He thanked everyone for coming to the Grays Harbor Cache Machine II Dinner (GC7EZGR).

Our food came and we enjoyed every bite of it.  It was nice visiting with Bob and Bev because it had been far too long.  We paid for our food and told everyone bye and that we would see them another time down the caching trail.

I wanted a few more caches on the way home even though it was dark.  We picked up 

Pacific Harbors (Coastal Waters) Cache to Eagle #3 (GC256PT) on the back side of the Walmart where the Chehalis River dumps into the Pacific Ocean.  There was a guy just loitering nearby and I hoped we could find it quickly so we could leave.  It was a magnetic key holder hidden under the metal part of the picnic table.

For fun Ben and I went into the Goodwill.  I go to check on certain things.  I've been looking for a Peru travel book for my upcoming trip to Peru in May 2019.  I check for Furbys, certain sports clothes and T-shirts, books and unique things I find that I can gift to someone.  Ben got creeped out so we left.

We stopped at the Dept. of Transportation service location to grab DOT Shovel (GC1Y354) which was behind the sign on a shovel.  We quickly signed the log and put it back.

Our last geocache for the day was Fire Me 11 Central Park (GC4117Q) which we found this time.  The last time we attempted this one we saw it was missing so we didn't stop.  That one also was a quick find, sign and return.

On the way back down the highway towards Olympia, near Elma, we ran over a large dead animal and I really hoped that it didn't ruin the tire or the bottom of my car.  It happened so fast I was unable to swerve to avoid it.  I still have no idea what it was.

We stopped in Lacey to check out some Christmas ornaments at Target and grabbed a few grocery items at the Fred Meyer.  We ended up getting home around 8:30.  We got cleaned up and then watched a few episodes of our shows, logged caches and relaxed a bit before it was time for bed.

This was Ben's first unorthodox cache machine and I hope we get to do a real one in the upcoming year.

Next Adventure:  New Year's Eve with Fireworks

A White Christmas

This was the first time in a few years that it actually snowed on Christmas.  I actually got worried that no one would be able to come over because of it.  I got up around 7 and came out and did some last minute stuff and made sure the breakfast casseroles got into the oven. 

Ben got up shortly, put some clothes on and helped me get the silverware, plates and cups out.  We cut up the fruit and put it on serving trays.  We had bananas, grapes, apples and oranges and when Grammie and Grandpa got there they brought the cinnamon rolls to go with it.

We definitely had plenty of food to go around and no one is going to starve.

I got into my Christmas spandex, I bought some for me, mom and Erika to wear on Christmas and didn't realize everyone wanted a pair, and braced myself for the morning chaos.  Just before 9 a.m. everyone started to arrive.  We all helped bring in presents and put them under the tree.

The breakfast casserole had just gotten done just after 9 a.m.  I got out the pizza pan and put some of the cinnamon rolls on it so we could heat them up a bit.  I had all the plates, silverware and cups on the table so Ben helped me put all the food on the table.  Everyone sat down and we passed the food around.

We talked about an array of things while we ate.  There is always a lot of laughing and our conversations always lead to someone talking about poop or pooping.  We talked about the Seahawks and usually the latest things going on in our lives.  In my and Ben's case we talked about roommate troubles and the next steps which was summoning her to small claims court because she was being unresponsive and unreasonable.  Doug and Jen were dealing with their itchy cat.  Erika had just moved in with Red at his house in Littlerock.  Mom and dad were finishing up the floor in the living room and thinking about cutting down some scary trees in their yard.  Everyone else was just trying to enjoy life as best as they could.

I was really hoping 2018 would be much better than 2017.  This year was pretty rough!  Builds character right?

After breakfast I gathered some of the dishes and put them in the dish washer, grandma, mom and Ben helped.  We needed to get them going so they would be done in time for dinner.  We went into the living room and everyone sat either on the giant couch or in some chairs and Karla passed out the presents to everyone.

Grammie had me this year and I had Jenn.  I tried to stick with the NY Giants and Ol' Miss stuff, she also wanted one of those Google Mini's. I made sure I stuck to the $50 limit.  All of it I bought online because I was sorta lazy this year.  I got a Seahawk sweatshirt and a few little things from Grammie.  We threw wadded up Christmas wrapping paper at each other for the next half hour while everyone admired their new goodies.  Erika had Grammie and bought her the 23 and Me DNA testing to find out where you are from and what you are made of.  Erika did it while working in the clinic in Germany and thought it would be fun to have Grammie do it.  Grammie spent the next half hour spitting into a vile so we could package it up and send it.

Just before noon, everyone packed up their stuff and headed home to chill out for a while and prepare their item for dinner.  I got the ham in as quickly as we could because it needed to cook for at least 4 hours.  Jenn went back to the house with mom and dad to check on her cat, Doug stayed with Ben, grandma and I and the rest left for a while.  Kevin and Karla would not be joining us for dinner.  I heard grandpa slipped and fell in my driveway.  He carried Grammie's purse and it had made him unbalanced and fell on the way to the truck.  We found out he was okay but he was going to be sore.

I sat on the couch for about 2 hours watching whatever was on the TV.  I was so relaxed I could have fallen asleep, which is what I wanted to do but I had to entertain guests and make sure the food wasn't burning.  Ben's mom, sister and the two little girls were coming over for dinner and we had to hid all of our valuables and breakables because I knew as soon as they came through the door, they would be touching EVERYTHING!

Around 3:00 is when they came through the door and just as I thought, they touched everything.  While I was making sure the ham was still doing well, it still had an hour-ish, I had to have Ben come in and make sure they weren't taking the magnets and pictures off the fridge.  They touched my NFL helmets, they fell to the floor and Ben had to take them down and put them away.  They ran around, got bored of everything, touched more stuff and finally we sat them down and gave them their Christmas presents.  They got Barbie dolls, accessories and clothes to put on them and a couple of other little fun kid gifts.  They were elated!  Ben and I opened the gifts Trish and Amy brought for us.  Then they continued touching more things.  Erika came back and got some of her drawing pads and markers out.  Then we turned on a cartoon and they immediately stopped and stared for a good while.

Everyone else arrived just before 4 and I was finishing up the gravy, the rolls and making sure the potatoes, ham and other hot foods were staying hot.  I let everyone know the food was done and everyone piled their food onto their plates and sat down at the super table.  Again, we talked about different things, people asked Trish and Amy questions since they weren't here this morning for breakfast.  We spend a lot of time visiting and the reason we can tell is we all beat Grammie eating our food.  She still has a bunch of food left on her plate because she is visiting so much.  We always give her a bad time for it.

Trish, Amy and the girls left around 7ish so they could be home at a decent time.  We were glad they came over.  Everyone else were in a food coma and wanted to leave because they were getting tired.  They thanked me for all the work I did and that it looked nice and turned out well.  Christmas sure goes by really fast even though we all spend a lot of time preparing for it.

After everyone left Ben and I started cleaning up.  I just couldn't go relax without knowing all the messes were cleaned up.  I started with the dining room and Ben spent some time cutting up the rest of the ham.  I got all the tables cleared off and cleaned along with putting the chairs away.  Then I heard him yelp from the kitchen.  He had just cut himself with the knife and we had bloody ham.  I helped him get rid of the bloody parts, got him cleaned up and sanitized and then I sanitized everything that he touched.  I swept the floor and vacuumed.  We started the dishwasher, got showers and went to bed.  We were so tired.  Until next Christmas!

Next Adventure: Grays Harbor Cache Machine II

Christmas Eve, Snow, Seahawks and Star Wars

Got up around 10ish and ate some cereal.  Ben got up around 8 to get ready to go to work at Costco around 9:30.  About the time I started cleaning the house for Christmas the next day it started snowing.  At first it was a light flurry and then it got heaver and started sticking.  

I started putting stuff away, followed by vacuuming, wiping down tables, setting the tables up, putting the table clothes and decorations on, brought in the chairs, I did laundry,  mopped all while occasionally peeking on the Seahawks and Cowboys score.  Since it was effing Joe Buck I watched it on mute because I can't stand the guy.  It continued snowing. 

We won 21-12 and the Cowboy fans were again disappointed with their season.  Their precious Dak did nothing for them and he even threw two interceptions.  Haha!

I got the house as done as I could possibly could.  The rest of the stuff would have to wait until tomorrow because it was the cooking part of it.

It was still snowing.

I gathered up all the gifts I had saved and wrapped and put them in a box for easy transport. I also took the recycle with me to Rainier and because it was snowing I had to follow some really slow people on Spurgeon and Rainier Road.  It took me a little less than an hour with the recycle just to get to the house which really takes about 20 min or so.  Rainier definitely had more snow than Lacey did.

I headed over to mom and dad's house and mom made some food, Erika, Red met us over there

Doug and Jen got there yesterday.  We ate and watched the snow come down.  Ben met us at the house after work so we could go to Star Wars as a family.

When people arrived we had them stay up at the culd-de-sac so they didn't get stuck in the yard trying to go up the hill.  We decided to open presents before we went to the movie.  This year it was hard because mom and dad were still trying to finish the flooring in the "Christmas" room.  We movedsome stuff over so we could all sit in the room and open gifts.    

As movie time became closer we all walked up to the culd-de-sac and piled into the vehicles.  I drove, Erika and Red drove and Ben drove.  Everyone piled into a vehicle and drove into Yelm.  It was quite the drive however my Escape handles the snow pretty well so I had fun.  However, dad put his backseat driver practice into action the entire time.

The snow tapered off.

We got there and mom wanted a family pic before we went inside.

I have tried not to support this particular cinemas because it is owned by the same person that owns the hotel and they let it get out of control and we were being treated pretty bad while I worked there.  Mom wanted to do something together with family and since we were all some degree of Star War fans we went and saw the Last Jedi.  I was excited to find out who Rey's parents where and that Kilo Ren got what he deserved for killing Han Solo.

Also, this cinema had some serious changes done to it over the past few years.  One half turned into a bar/hangout called Uptown Lounge and the other remained the theater.  Ben and I decided to share a large popcorn and a drink.  They handed us our containers and we went and filled them up.  It was completely different than the last time we came here.  Plus it was bottomless!

We gave the tickets to the ticket taker and he directed us to our theater.  We expected to see a lot of people but there were still a bunch of seats left but we were also early so it could fill up quick.  We found a chunk of seats off to the right of the theater and some of us sat in the one row and Erika and Red sat behind and Doug and Jen sat in front of us so we could all be near each other.  Indeed, it filled up pretty quickly just before the previews started.

The movie had my attention from the get-go.  I thoroughly enjoyed the weird birds on the island and watching Kilo Ren get his butt kicked but I got sad when Luke disappeared.  However, there were so many unanswered questions by the tie the movie was done and I wanted answers! Now we have to wait for the next movie December 2019 but then they might not answer them then either.

Erika and Red headed back towards Littlerock/Rochester, Doug and Jen rode with Ben and mom and dad rode with me.  I had to stop at the Arco and get gas before we went back into Rainier.  Apparently no one heard me say I need to stop and get gas so Ben's car of people went back to the house without the house key and they would have to wait in the car or stand outside until we got home.

When we got there, they were actually sitting in the vehicle Doug and Jenn rented.  I heard that Jenn fell and slid down the hill on the way back to the house, not sure why she was wearing flip flops in the middle of winter with a couple inches of snow on the ground.

Ben and I stayed for a few minutes before we decided to head home since the roads were slick and all.  When we got home I checked to make sure I got everything done before we went to bed...we were going to have to get up pretty early to start breakfast.

Next Adventure:  A White Christmas