Treasure Hunt

Okay...so I must brag on Brad once again! He is a wonderful daddy and always does neat things with the kids, but this particular event "took the cake" in both being precious and hysterical at the same time! This morning, the kids woke up to the doorbell ringing incessantly. Their sleepy little bodies meandered towards to the door to see what was going on. At the prompting of Brad, they opened the door to find a letter addressed especially to them! Their excitement grew as Brad read the letter that some "pirates" had left for them:They squealed with excitement as they ran to the back door (pushing each other outside) and found a ziplock baggie with TWO treasure maps inside!! Their faces were absolutely priceless as they opened their maps! Isabella was asking a million questions trying to figure everything out as she is our little detective and Elijah was cracking us up just squealing and jumping up and down enjoying the sheer excitement of it all!Is he not just so precious and proud!?! He is actually holding Isabella's treasure map (that Brad said he held over a candle fire to make it look old and oooops! It acidentally caught fire!)

They quickly put on warm clothes and shoes and out the door we went to find the treasure! Isabella continued to ask questions like, "Who rang our doorbell? How did they get into our backyard? Why do they want us to have their treasure? Don't we need a shovel to dig up the treasure?" At the last question, Brad began laughing hysterically and I was definitely in the dark until he explained......

Early this morning, he drew up the letter and the maps and then took our shovel and the "treasures" down to the lake close to our home that is situated just past a forested area behind our subdivision's community pool. Since it was kind of rainy, he wrapped the "treasures" into their own large plastic bags so they wouldn't ruin when buried. Great idea, right? Yes......until it is very early on a Saturday morning and a large suspicious man with a rusty shovel and two large plastic bags containing unknown items quickly descends down the remote hill to the water's edge and begins burying the plastic bags! What do you think the policeman thought who had pulled up his patrol car and was watching him?

Needless to say, Brad saw the policeman's car, threw the shovel down and left it there and walked back up the hill thinking how he was going to explain himself! He ended up getting back home without much trouble from the police!!

After we arrived back at the buried treasure spot, we all felt like we were sneaky little ex-cons and I kept telling the kids to "hurry up!" I didn't get a chance to take pictures because I was on the "lookout" for more police....I mean "pirates"!! I felt like Harrison Ford in "The Fugitive" as Brad was laughing the entire time (especially when Isabella discovered that the "nice pirates" left us a shovel to dig for the treasure and was appalled that we were "stealing their shovel" as we brought it back to our car!)

It definitely was a fun time, but then again, we always have fun with Clark Griswald!