National Pancake Day at IHOP

Today was National Pancake Day at IHOP. It is a fundraiser they do each year for the Children's Miracle Network. They offer a free short stack of pancakes to all customers and encourage you to make a donation to the CMN for the price of the pancakes or whatever other amount you choose. Since Christian is "Pancake Boy", it would just be wrong to not take him for free pancakes!

Bass Lake

We took our annual trip up to Bass Lake and were pleasantly surprised by all the snow! The locals said they hadn't seen that much snow up there in 20+ years. Thank God we have a 4-wheel drive! When we got there it was dark, but Christian couldn't wait to throw a snowball at me. There was probably 6 inches on the ground when we arrived. It snowed all night and all the next day and added 6 - 8 more inches. Check out the pics below. It was nice to not have to drive to the snow to play and have fun!

Fun in the snow!

There was a small hill perfect for sledding behind the condo complex. Someone made a nice track with a small jump at the bottom. We made it a little bigger and Christian had a ball "catching air"

Christian and mom having fun in the snow!

The Amgen Bike Tour of California

While we were in Oakhurst the Amgen Bike Tour was scheduled to come right through town. We thought it would be fun to witness history and watch the bike riders. I didn't know much about this race until today. Lance Armstrong was somewhere in the pack that went racing by. We found a nice little corner up the hill about a mile from town, parked and waited. I had packed lunch so we got out the snowboard sat down and had a picnic on the side of the road! 

Since all the roads were blocked off to traffic, Christian thought it was pretty cool to be able to sit and wait in the middle of the road! I'm glad I had a notebook to keep him busy.

After waiting for almost an hour, they finally said that the racers were just down the hill. When the first few came by, Christian was less than thrilled! He said "Mom, is that it?" There were 3 racers that pulled ahead of the pack at this stage in the race, so it wasn't quite what Christian was expecting!

So about 3 or 4 minutes later, the rest of the pack came flying by. 

As fast as they came, they were gone!

And don't forget the road crew following the pack with all the spare parts!

Fresno Flats

We found a virtual cache on our trip. Since you can't place items like caches in national parks, people create virtual caches. They usually write up the significance of the area and have some questions you need to answer to be able to log the find.  You can find the answers by visiting the location and reading the information they have available. Sometimes they require a picture of you at the location.

The one we visited was Fresno Flats Historical Park in Oakhurst.  When people first came to the area in the 1850's it was called Fresno Flats. They have recreated a little village using  some of the original buildings and placed them all together so you can see them. They were closed for the winter when we were there, but are usually open and have people "working" in the various location much as they did 150 years ago. We will go back some time to see it in action.

Hang Tree in Oakhurst

We spotted someone hiding in the trees very close to one of the caches.

Dropping off our geocaching friends

After having fun with our traveling friends, we found a great location to pass them along so someone else can travel and have fun with them.

Benchmarks

We have added searching for benchmarks to our treasure hunting fun. In areas where there weren't any buildings to use, they used rocks. We found a couple in the hills on our trip.

What is a benchmark?

A benchmark is a point whose position is known to a high degree of accuracy and is normally marked in some way. The marker is often a metal disk made for this purpose, but it can also be a church spire, a radio tower, a mark chiseled into stone or a metal rod driven into the ground. Over two centuries or so, many other objects of greater or lesser permanence have been used. They can be found all over the USA. They are used by land surveyors, builders and engineers, map makers and other professionals who need an accurate answer to the question "Where?"

There it is!!

Our first First to Find!!!

In the geocaching world, it is a pretty big deal to be the first to find a new cache. Some of the locals are pretty competitive when it comes to being the first to find. The last new one we attempted (after school, of course...) was first logged in at 7:10am!!! Good Grief-these people are really serious! 

Anywho, I checked my email before I left the office today, which is something I don't usually do and there was a new one posted that was right in town! (They are usually up in Morgan Hill or Gilroy...) I ran up to the house and told Christian to get his shoes on and get in the car. He had no clue what was going on. When I told him, he couldn't get in the car fast enough! It was almost dark when we got there but we were the first!! Yeah!! It made Christian's day, can you tell by the picture?

Super Bowl Sunday

We went over to our neighbors Billie and Patrick's house for Super Bowl Sunday. Billie is a gourmet cook and always makes the best snacks for any occasion! We are so lucky to have such great neighbors!!

We had enough food for at least 20 people, although there were only 7 of us!!

Some more of the food we enjoyed on Super Bowl Sunday!

Off with the training wheels!!

We finally got brave enough to take off the training wheels. We went to a local park that had a slightly sloped grassy hill that was perfect for the take off. And off he went! He rode around the park like he had done it many times before... except for running into the bench, garbage can, basketball pole and whatever else got in his way!!! He did a great job for his first time.

Once I got going, there was no stopping me! 

Family Art Night at school

Christian decorated a gingerbread house for Family Art Night at his school. There were some local artists on hand to show the kids different types of art. They were demonstrating clay molding, water color,  jewelry making, cake decorating and many others.  The kids could submit many different types of art and we decided to finish up the gingerbread house we didn't get done for Christmas this year. It was a fun night!

Gotta love that smile!

Say "cheese"!!

Lost our 2nd tooth.

We finally lost our 2nd tooth and thank goodness we didn't swallow this one!

Yep, it's up here!

When it comes to caches like this one, it's good to have a 6yr old monkey to climb up the tree!

Are you sure it's up there??

Some people go to extremes in hiding the caches. This was the very first one we searched for and weren't really sure what we were doing. We thought it was up here, but not quite sure. We went back a couple weeks later and found it!

More caching fun!

Time to update our blog with more photos!  This is one in Gilroy that we went to 4 different times and could never seem to find it... leave it to the 6 yr old to figure out where it is!!