Mother's Day Weekend

Yesterday we had some fun at a geocaching event in Saranac Lake...it was organized as a worldwide "flash mob" that consisted of thousands of geocachers in almost 200 events and 16 countries...


Attendees were instructed to show up at exactly 1pm, and at the tolling of the bell, were told to...


...put on clown noses that they had retrieved at a cache outside of town...


Penny had a great time at the event, loved meeting all of the new people and Harley (pictured below), but needed some "mom-time" to chill out...


Harley, a perfectly behaved boxer, was a great playmate for Penny during the event...


Here's a group photo of everyone who attended the Saranac Lake event...we were there for 15 minutes, then everyone took off the noses, and faded away...it was lots of fun, and we got some great looks from people walking/driving by...


This morning, Gail read to Ben for a while, and then we made pancakes for Gail...


After breakfast, Gail and Penny took a little nap while Ben and I went out to romp in the woods for a bit...


We woke Gail up a little later, and took her out to Ben's secret clubhouse/fort in the woods in front of our house, where he had a little surprise hidden for her...


He had hidden a geocache in the woods, among the baby balsam trees...


We retrieved it and went to open it in a fort that Ben and I built out of dead trees and tarps...yes, the ammo-can is fluorescent pink...


Inside the ammo-can was a bag that Ben decorated at school, and within that was a beautiful box that Ben had painted and jazzed up with stickers...the floor of the fort is covered with a tarp and a cushy layer of balsam boughs...it's closed to the elements from the North and West, and open to them to the South and East...Ben was excited about watching cars go by without their being able to see us, and about maybe sleeping out in it sometime...we're setting up an ammo-can for him to bring out their with essential supplies, like snacks and books and coloring stuff...


Penny kept getting hung up on her leash in the woods, so she bit it...


Ben and Gail liked hanging out in the fort...


Ben told Gail about how we built the fort, and about the next round of improvements that we were going to make...


Penny fell asleep in Gail's arms while we were out at Ben's fort...


She's a gifted sleeper...


When we got back inside, Penny fell asleep on the sofa, and I loved the colors and textures of her napping spot...