Picture Weekend

First of all, thank you so much for all the lovely comments that have been left on my baby post last week, and for the emails I've had too - I was really touched that people took the time to write on my little old blog! The baby is definitely making his or her presence known, kicking hard, usually as I'm trying to fall asleep, but isn't that always the way?!

We had a lovely time this weekend, making the most of B's last few days before starting school. It's been a while since I did a Picture Weekend post, but I'm trying to be a bit more organised and regular in my blogging, so here goes!

T was out all day Saturday and the weather wasn't great so B and I spent most of hte day at home doing things that we'd been meaning to do for ages - baking cakes (sorry, they didn't last long enough for a photo!), finishing off a box he had to decorate for school and printing out the photos to go inside it, watch Toy Story curled up together on the sofa before Auntie Katie wants her discs back.

I also got out a pack of hama beads that I'd bought ages ago and put away until B was big enough - he couldn't get enough of them, and I am amazed at the patience he's got with them! A shelf in his bedroom is now full of patterns and pictures he's made. I helped him find the centre of the star above, and then, I promise you, he filled in the rest all by himself.

We met some friends for Sunday lunch at a pub in the New Forest, something we haven't done for ages and really must do more often. 

We went geocaching afterwards - and if you haven't heard of this game of treasure hunting using GPS then go and visit this site - it's brilliant fun! T has set a few caches up for other people to find, but again, it's been ages since we'd done any. 

The Forest was particularly beautiful yesterday. Even the fallen trees were homes for new life.

 The moment of discovery!

Each cache is hidden away, sometimes with a series of clues to help you find it. Some complicated geocaches can take half a day or more to solve! You have to be careful when you find it and especially when you hide it away again that Muggles don't see what you're doing.

 I just love the look on his face in this one!

This cache was a particularly good one with lots of treasure inside.

The idea is that you leave a note in the log book to show that you've found it and take a piece of treasure, leaving another piece in return. The pieces of treasure eventually travel all over the place, and there are geocaches in both towns and in the countryside.

These are travel bugs - I've never seen so many in one geocache before! If you take one of these you have to move it to a different geocache, you can't just keep it. They are registered on the main site so you can track their progress. Some have specific missions, for example to travel as far away as possible from their original site, to visit as many countries as possible or to visit geocaches that have a particular theme to them.

Our friend Dawn took the bicycle chain travel bug - who knows where it will eventually end up?!