Short, But Sweet!

We got the Alaska contingent back to our house from the airport just as the sunrise was painting some pink on the clouds.

It didn't take long for Turk (our dog) and Winston (Spencer's dog) to both find a spot on BJ's lap.

We celebrated Thanksgiving at our daughter & SIL's house. For some reason, I didn't get any pictures of the spread, but it didn't take long for the sound of silverware and plates to be the predominate sound.

Spencer and I went out geocaching a couple times, visiting some new caches that have been recently placed in the area.

Saturday morning, I hosted a geocacher's gathering to introduce Spencer, and appropriately named the event "It's His Fault." We were amazed by the turnout. Lots of our winter visitors are back, and several new geocachers attended as well. It was a great opportunity for folks to share hints and thank Spencer since many of the caches in the local area wouldn't have happened if he hadn't introduced us to the sport.

We headed towards the airport at 10 p.m. Sunday night, with a slight detour so Spencer and I could pick up a First To Find on a cache that published minutes before we left the house. They left on a midnight flight headed north, getting home a couple hours before Spencer headed off to school.

We're sure glad they came. It was great fun to have the whole family in one place for a while.

Reasons to be Thankful

For some reason, I've been much more reflective about Thanksgiving this year.

I was especially thankful this morning to enjoy a freeway, just for me.

And a cell phone waiting lot at the airport that didn't have any flights on the screen.

Terminal 2 is a flashback to the past, but remains our favorite local terminal. Yesterday evening all the local news programs were highlighting the hordes of people at the airport. This morning, it's all peaceful.

The carousels sit idle, but not for long, because the Alaska contingent is arriving on the all-nighter. First time in a number of years that we've had all the family together for Thanksgiving.

People that know me well know that I'm an introvert at heart, loving quiet and solitude. That said, I find that this year, I'm especially thankful for all the people in my life. Some, I rarely if ever see, others I see regularly, but to all the people in my life, I'm thankful for your influence.

Building Smiles

Last spring, a couple fellow geocachers asked me about my background, wondering where I came up with ideas for my caches. It took months of thinking about it, but I recently created a series of 13 caches that I called my autobiographical series to try and answer their innocent question.

Each of them are puzzle caches - a least one, and in some cases, two puzzles must be solved to determine the final coordinates of the cache.

Each of the puzzles starts with an online jigsaw puzzle that was built from a collage of personal pictures. Each cache listing told a part of my story, and the online jigsaw puzzle (when solved) provided the final coordinates or pointed to the next puzzle to be solved.

I tried to make cache containers that were congruent with the jigsaw puzzle.

I especially liked this one since it took the most searching to come up with the old pitchfork. I could easily get a new pitchfork, but I wanted an old, gnarly one. I finally found this one in an antique shop in Payson and got a super good deal on it because it wasn't useful anymore. Little did he know...

I did one about trucking, since working with Dad was where I first was introduced to planning and was the biggest influence on my leadership style.

Amazingly, this simple cache is the one that people seem to like the most.

I did one that was intended to recognize the influence of teachers in my life. I think of my high school wood shop teacher nearly every time I go out to play in the shop.

I thought this one would be the most popular cache of the series, but that's not how it turned out. Sometimes I come up with something simple that turns out to be very popular, other times, not so much.

I thought I was out of ideas with this series, and then a friend made a passing comment about a picture I posted to Facebook that has my mind buzzing with possibilities. One never knows where the next idea will come from.

Meanwhile, I'm enjoying building smiles one cache at a time.