Letter Boxing

 When Brian and I moved to the Dayton area, we struggled with finding things to do on the cheap.  After a while, a trip to the library became kind of .... routine.  So I tried finding something else for us to do and somehow stumbled across Letter Boxing.  I checked out some listings on line and found a few clues on how to locate a few of them.  

Letter Boxing is a two step project.  A person creates a letter box, putting a stamp and usually some folded paper or notepad in a small box and leaves clues online.  A person (like me) gets a few clues and heads out, trying to locate the box.  For example, our first one found was hidden in the Woodland Cemetery with directions to kind of locate a cement bench with two hats no it.  (The hats belonged to the Wright Brothers, who are buried here.)  After a bit of searching behind trees and under some mulch, we located the little box.  We pulled out the stamp and stamped our book.  Then we took my stamp (a teddy bear of course!) and stamped their little notebook and dated it so the owners would know someone had found their hidden treasure!   The other stamp found inside this same cemetery was The Old Rugged Cross, 

This was the kind of project that we could pull up on the computer and head out to some local place to walk around and find.  We found our first two in January 2008, and then our next one after we moved to Arizona was in December 2008.  The stamp found was a hand carved stamp of a Happy Gila Monster.  

I chalk these experiences as something that Brian did with me because he was always up for something, no matter what weird thing I was thinking of!  And it might have seemed a little "cheesey" for a guy to do with his mom at his age (early 20s), but what guy doesn't enjoy a treasure hunt???

Hello Summer

Sultry, steaming, sweltering July.  A time to slow down. Or stop.  It's time to shed ambition and expectation, our wants seems to diminish.  It is because our needs are met?  

As a kid, I looked forward to summer, time away from school and learning, from schedules and demands.  Days seemed to go on forever, nothing was extremely important.  The summer I was 11 a neighbor got something in a cardboard box, a box big enough to use to build a fort.  I tucked it up against the back fence, up against the house .... close enough to run an extension cord in order to listen to the radio! I took my favorite books out there, a small pillow.  It was my home away from home for the entire summer!  I even drew windows with curtains on the cardboard to make it look like home. hehehe  

Summers in my teens were spent going to the local pool which was open from 1-5pm on weekdays.  My sister and I would head out on our bikes and swim the afternoon away -- not sure we were in it for the swimming as much as we liked the social aspect of it all --- meaning boys!!

Later, after having children, I looked forward to those summers, time with my kids to enjoy those same summertime joys!  Long days at the beach, playing in a local park, or even just splashing in a wading pool at my mom's house.  Summer is the time to relax, kick back, enjoy the slower pace for a while.  It gives us a chance to rejuvenate, or perhaps reflect on things. 

Now that I'm older, and living in the Valley of the Sun, I look at summer as I did my winters when I lived in Ohio.  We kind of hunker down indoors with the AC.  It becomes my time for little summer projects.  Sometimes it's touching up the paint on the trim and doors.  Sometimes it's digging into some of my photographs, or working on my scrapbooks.  Or best, spending time on the computer researching family genealogy lines.  I love digging through the archives of the local newspaper, because back in the day, they published all kinds of newsy things!   I learned that my maternal grandmother won a blue ribbon in sewing at the county fair when she was 10 years old!  But I got off track there.   Summer can be a magical, simply abundant time if we know where to spend our energies!  

So take a morning walk, snap a photo or two, and take note of the way you're feeling; it can lift your spirits!