SOME THINGS WE SAW TODAY

For several weeks our family has been running all over town looking for interesting things to do. Everything has been play it by ear'. Whatever that means. And I know it doesn't mean, 'Let's just see what happens'. There's always a plan. So when my wife mentioned one Sunday morning that there was a treasure hunt going on downtown, and that "Hmm, that might be a fun thing to do," I knew that was the plan. Thinking over the options of what we could do on this second day of Fall, which was either to stay at home & clean the house because relatives are coming or go on a treasure hunt, I chose the latter. Like most times when we leave the house, we all go our separate ways to take care of last minute business before we meet at the car. I always hop in the shower, the girls feed and water the animals and the wife gets online. I don't know why.

Anyway, it always takes us less than 30 minutes, unless somebody is outside spraying down the garden. That might add a few more minutes. And then we're off. Now it usually takes some time to get from point A to point B, because suddenly we are all saying, "Hey, we never did this," or "We never did that," and then the famous "I'm hungry!" chorus starts circling around the car. So, after food, we're off. And like every weekend, our sense of time starts to get away from us.

Like last weekend we decided to go to Park City. A drive which would generally take us about a half hour ended up taking us about three. Why? Because on our way out of town we passed by a big 'Close Out Sale'. But I'm not complaining about this because I got stuff and then we got food.

So, we're going on this treasure hunt and my wife starts explaining the rules. And she's rattling off everything we need to do, like where it's at and what we're looking for and I'm thinking it almost sounds like she's a little too familiar with these rules. So I inquire and I get this, "Well, it's my work and they've been doing this for 16 years and we can't enter because I work there, but hey, it'll be fun."

So I'm sitting there taking that all in and all I can think of is: There's no prize? 16 years? Why didn't I know about this before? We've been married for 12 years and this was the first time I'd ever heard about an annual treasure hunt from her work. I love a good treasure hunt as much as I love Halloween. And before I can think of anything else to say we're downtown and my wife yells out, "There's one!" And any thoughts I might of had before were gone. Poof. The 20 items we were looking for just got knocked down to 19 and less than five minutes later we had 18, and then 17.

After fifteen minutes of driving around we finally decided to get out of the car and split up. There were five of us because our girls had invited the neighborhood girl. Splitting up sounded like a good plan, but it didn't really work out to anyone's advantage. The girls all wanted to go by themselves, but we weren't about to leave an 9-, 10- and 11- year old alone to run around downtown by themselves. I don't care whether they all have their purple belts or not. So the girls go one way and I go another. And not too much later my youngest is calling me trying to explain to me what mom wants and where I should go. First off, my youngest is 10 years old and she doesn't even know where she's at. She just knows we're downtown by mom's work. And she's trying to give me directions where to go. So I look over my shoulder to where she's standing in the middle of the square and she's waving her hand and pointing out directions like I might actually be able to see her. (Which in this case I could.) And I'm thinking we were actually almost thinking of letting them run around by themselves. But my big question was why didn't my wife just call me and tell me exactly where they were.

Anyway, that was two weeks ago and I was just wondering what we were going to do today when my wife just called and said, "We're just thinking of going on a little jaunt. Want to come?"

THESE ARE SOME OF THE THINGS WE SAW TODAY...

(Button)



(Trouble)

(Just miles from home)

(Who's the Boss)

(What???)