Treasure Hunting for Dummies

Stacey, my friend from Ohio, has blessed us with a visit this week and brought some serious Ohio culture with her. First, she made cake balls, which I have morally opposed for so long, and forced me to eat and like them. Then she introduced us to letterboxing.

What is letterboxing? According to Wikipedia "Letterboxing is an outdoor hobby that combines elements of orienteering, art, and puzzle solving. Letterboxers hide small, weatherproof boxes in publicly-accessible places (like parks) and distribute clues to finding the box in printed catalogs, on one of several web sites, or by word of mouth. Individual letterboxes usually contain a notebook and a rubber stamp. Finders make an imprint of the letterbox's stamp, either on their personal notebook or on a postcard, and leave an impression of their personal stamp on the letterbox's "visitors' book" or "logbook" — as proof of having found the box and letting subsequent letterboxers see who have visited. Many letterboxers keep careful track of their "find count"".

Okay, now that the boring definitions are out of the way let me show you what we found. Stacey looked up several letterboxes around the Antelope Valley on AtlasQuest.com and off we went. By the way, the boys were majorly into treasure hunting before Stacey showed us any of this so we have some really excited people in our house right now!

The first letterbox was in Llano, CA. We followed clues down some crazy dirt roads and ended up at the ruins of the Llano del Rio Colony built in 1900 by the unified Socialist Party, which included Aldous Huxley.


The clues led us around the tower, down this road-thing and through and old house. Then we had to use a compass heading to find a rock pile, go a few paces to a speckled rock and then find our treasure! Here is Stacey stamping the log book in the letterbox and stamping the letterbox stamp in her book.

Letterbox #2 and 3 were at Devil's Punchbowl. Gorgeous this time of year!!!

We couldn't find the first box but found the second. This is it's stamp, an owl named Squints.

Here is the real Squints. As an owlet he fell from the nest and was rescued. He now has this sweet pad at the visitor center. He looks like he loves it.

So that was our first trip out. The next day we brought Erik with us and his excitement far outstripped the childrens'.

Letterbox #1 ended up being on the north side of the "Welcome to Mojave" sign.

It was a Spaceship One stamp called the Ten Million Dollar Baby and carried the dedication "Dedicated to the ingenuity of private industry and capitalism." All the stamps below Spaceship One are from other people who have visited this site.

The next box we were headed for was supposed to be a turtle but as we got nearer and Erik read the clues he quickly made a U-turn and informed us that the "unusual sign" the prize promised to be hiding beneath was a large billboard of a less than clothed woman. I've never driven that way or seen said sign but I was glad to take his word for it and head off to Letterbox #3 and 4 in Tehachapi.

These two were really fun! They were at historical markers at the Tehachapi railroad loop, which is apparently world famous, read the signs!

A train derailed on the loop on February 21, 2010 so we got to watch the cleanup and see the fire fighters working to remove the rest of the damage.

So here is Stacey's log book for our letterboxing adventures (except for the pirate, that was another adventure of hers). All the stamps are hand carved, I love the train loop stamp!

One last picture of the loop! So we are addicted now and will be making our own stamps and log books for the kids. Hopefully, we'll help each of the kids make and plant their own boxes around the Antelope Valley. Thanks Stacey for including us in the fun!!!

The Origin of Pasta by Means of Natural Selection, or the Preservation of Favoured Tortellini in the Struggle for an Evening Meal

In the beginning, there was an egg. Nevermind how the egg got there, just assume that it was. The pasta was void and formless, and the yoke of the egg was hovering over the face of the flour. Nevermind how the flour got there. Once again, just assume that it was.

Through a process of one part Brownian motion, two parts Heisenberg uncertainty principle, and just a pinch of magic: there was dough. This process is far too complex for the un-indoctrinated mind to comprehend, so don't even try. You'll cook your noodle.

After millions of years of random gravitational pulls and both the strong and weak nuclear forces, the dough became supple and extruded into a sheet of uniform 1/8" thickness.

With this perfect substrate of randomly aligned hydrocarbons, starches and that mysterious egg yolk, ricotta cheese naturally appeared. Once again, don't ask how, just assume that it did. Soon to follow was fresh parsely, both perfectly portioned and placed into a disk of dough precisely 1/8" thick and of perfect symmetry.

Through yet another unknown process, probably involving dark matter, the disk (much like space-time) folded over on itself, thus creating two parallel dimensions of dough, ricotta cheese, fresh parsley and that mysterious egg yolk.


Through meiosis (a process by which single celled, ricotta cheese and parsely filled dough replicate without dividing), an entire population developed. Some were slightly fat, some slightly thin. Some slightly tall, some slightly small. Some intelligent, and some as dumb as pasta. Through centuries of millenia, these random combinations of particles with no known origin formed villages, cities, towns and nations. For a while, they experimented with Marxism, then adopted communism with "pasta characteristics."

Then, mysteriously and probably through some sort of meteor strike causing cataclysmic climate change, they were no more. All that was preserved was an empty red pot. Once again, don't ask where that came from, just assume that it did. However, the leftover bio-mass of these little pinko commy hooligans might one day grow into your neighbor. Don't ask how, just assume that it will.

Photos by Missy Reynolds

Written by the Red Hairring

No animals were harmed in the filming of this propoganda (except the mysterious egg, which may or may not be a chicken yet), but 4 children were ignored.

Ninja Attack in West Lancaster

How else do you explain this being imbedded in the sidewall of Erik's tire? It took all of about 0.2 seconds for the tire to deflate and Erik is in mourning as this ends the 8-year-without-a-flat streak he was on. Way to go out in style!

"Jacob" Means "Deceiver"

It really does, which begs the question "Why is it such a popular name then?" During our math lesson this morning we discussed the concept of congruency. I would make a shape and he would then produce a congruent shape on his geoboard. I hyperlinked it to dictionary.com just in case you non-math types need a definition. Just a little service we offer...

Anyway, I would make a shape like this:
and he would produce the congruent shape on his board. I offered to let him be the teacher and make the shape for me to copy and this is what I get:
Congruent effort? I should say not.

I Am Not Martha Stewart

It seems like just about every week I have a major cooking disaster. It seems I needed more time with grandmothers and other folks who know what it means to "just add some till it looks about right." When I was adding water according to the recipe it looked about right but after the baking cycle ended we had travelled from "it looks about right" to "it looks like it came from Mars." However, I HAVE had some spectacular successes with the bread machine overall. After a failure of this magnitude I prefer to blame it on whatever contraptions were involved and move on to other contraptions for a while. Yesterday I took a huge gamble and switched from bread to pie (not a wise move in general for me because the score is Me: 0 Pie:132 to this point). But yesterday, God granted me victory!

In other fascinating food news today was our first pick up from Abundant Harvest! We opened the box and had a great homeschool time that started with the line "Kids these are called fresh vegetables. Repeat after me: FRESH VEGETABLES."

Libby heard the word "cauliflower" and decided that even if it doesn't look like a flower, it's name has flower in it and therefore it must be lovely. Erik took this picture and I think he's brushing up on his bridal photography...we could cut down the amount we are saving for her wedding if she stays enamoured with the cauliflower bouquet!

Here is Mr. Dan and the Leek of Power! The one curious component of the box this week was a large bunch of dill. Anyone know what to do with dill besides make pickles?

My New Year Starts in February

Right after Christmas people go crazy making rash promises to themselves that they fully intend to keep for three weeks. Out of laziness or some deep conviction (those are close) I'm making my rash promises now, after most of those guys have already given up.

Broad resolution #1: Eat better. Less processed food and more vegetables. In order to do this I signed us up for Abundant Harvest and Erik bought me a bread machine. Mmm...homemade bread, just sounds healthier right? Broad resolution #2: Erik surprised me with a family membership to the YMCA. He presented it with the opening statement: "Men are never supposed to give their wives gym memberships but..." So after I punched him in the face...not really, I'm thrilled, the kids are thrilled, my lonely forgotten, skinny jeans in the back of my closet are thrilled. Let us pray this resolution lasts longer than 3 weeks.

So if I put it on the internet maybe that will make me stick with it longer than 3 weeks right?

Erik's Diabolical Plan to Skip Our Anniversary

Our 9 year wedding anniversary was January 6th. This is one of the few pictures I could find that the professional photographer didn't take and thus wouldn't sue me if I posted it so sorry about the quality of my scanner. But weren't we cute and innocent then? Erik was so excited about the blessed day that on January 5th, 2010 he hopped on a plane, crossed the date line, and landed in Guam on January 7th. If that isn't a diabolical plan to get out of buying roses and dinner, I don't know what is!

He did take me to dinner both before and after his trip and let me pick my Valentine's present and have it early (you'll probably be hearing alot about that later.) Major brownie points and I love my dear!