It's My Due Date, and I'll Climb a Hill if I Want To!

with my husband right behind me so if I fall down I get to squish him on the way down!

So on Sunday, yes, my official due date, (which could also be May 3rd), we went geocaching! And I climbed a very steep hill, saying all the way, "I can't believe I am climbing a hill like this on my due date. I am for blazing Pete's sake nine months pregnant! This is so fun! Pant, pant, pant." That was after hiking around a cow pasture because we didn't have a GPS and .41 of a mile is not the same as about a 1/2 mile. But we found it! And then we went by a cemetery, and then drove out to the fourth cache of the day and found it was at a Wildlife Management Area. Which those are really great in ND, and I love them.

This was my favourite cache, yeah, I know, better than climbing the hill? YES!!! We saw ducks and Canadian geese and raccoon tracks and fish jumping out of the water and some sticking their fins out (must have been waving at us) and tree swallows and deer and best of all, pelicans. I love pelicans. They are so big and beautiful with their white and black wings, and their wingspans are so wide!

So altogether about 30 flew up from the little lake area, which was hidden by trees, but I got some neat pictures, and the last one flew up the length of the lake right beside the trail we were on. He was really close, and I could have had an awesome picture if I hadn't run out of film. But I'd never been that close so I was still pretty excited. They have a bump on the top of their beaks, anyone know why?

So after all that, did I get a baby for my effort? And for walking a couple of miles?
NO!

My New Hobby--and It's not Changing Diapers!

Well, Nathaniel and I have discovered a new hobby. That's one thing that is fun when you get married is doing your spouse's hobbies with him/her. Like listening to them talk in their sleep or play guitar for hours or stomping on the brakes when they say, "Stop here, I want to take a picture!" or collecting things like rocks and snakeskins and birdnests. . .

But anyhow, we went for a drive, like we do fairly often when we can't stand being in town, even a small city like Bismarck! And as we were going along the road that parallels the river, I see a sign for a boat landing and point and blurt out, "Landing!" Which meant and my smart husband correctly interpreted as "Turn and go there!" So we wander around and put out a smouldering log someone had left, it was windy, and I was glad it hadn't spread.

I had the camera and took some pictures of the river and trees and wanted to have a person next to this ginormous tree by the parking area. So my sweet man bravely volunteered for the duty and proceeded to climb said huge tree. I took a couple of pictures and as he was climbing down, he found a film canister with a little toy soldier wired to it. We are most curious and open it to find that it is a Geocache.

Geocaching is where someone hides a cache (film canister or other sort of container) and posts the coordinates on a website: http://www.geocaching.com/about/ and other people can plug those coordinates into their GPSs and find the cache. You write in the logbook and leave something and take something--if there's something that appeals to you.

To join is free, and you can actually do it without a GPS. Hehe, which I really like because it's just not the way it's done, hehe.

We use Google Earth, and measure the distance from this point and so forth and have found 8 that way. Okay, okay, so two of those were accidental finds, the first and another while looking for another one. But it is really fun and instead of our usual drive around and look for something to do, or a place to go walking where's there's not tons of (or any) people, (can you tell we grew up in the country?), we go driving to find hidden treasure.

We took a button from on cache which says, "I use multi-million dollar satellites to find Tupperware in the woods. What's your hobby?"

Which bring up a question, what is your hobby? And do you or do you think most people usually have only one hobby? Is reading a hobby? I'm taking a poll, so answer! :D