Welcome 2009!

Life has not slowed down for us in the new year yet but I know that it will eventually. We had a fantastic New Year's Party that was a Geocaching Event. We set the limit of attendees to 50 and still had more than that in attendance. It was CRAZY! We had tons of food, drinks, laughs, a hilarious auction for door prizes and a raffle for "first-to-find" honors on a new series of caches in the Greater Grand Rapids Area. We even had Teams from the Washington D.C. area and Ohio! Our home was packed to the gills with wacky cachers and it was wonderful-already looking into a bigger venue for next year's celebration!

We have a really big Geocaching Event next weekend-there should be over 100 people participating in Michigan's first ever Geo Rally. Mike and I have put a lot of work into this event and are really looking forward to it. Hopefully it will be successful enough to repeat again later in the year! Wish us luck!

The girls had their first ever sleep-over at Grandma and Grandpa Brace's house while the party was in full swing at our home. From all reports, everything went very well! Which is exciting for us since we were allowed to sleep past 10am for the first time in 4 years! They played in the hot tub and watched movies and played games-sounds like fun to me. They are already looking forward to the next time they can go back and do it again!

We spent all day Friday geocaching in the Kalamazoo area with Deane and Linda. We have not been able to go caching together in months and it felt really good to be together and get another 30+ finds under our belts. We also had dinner with our dear friends, Ty & Pat, who we do not get to see enough of. It was nice to just hang out and chat, and relax for a change!

Saturday, Mike helped my sister and brother-in-law install a new stove and dishwasher, which took longer than expected due to the need for some new wiring and additional electrical work. Good thing Mike knows how to do just about everything! And to top it all off, we met up with some friends from Portage, who were in town geocaching, for dinner!

Today is a day of rest and a time to regroup for next Sunday's Geo Rally. The roads are ice covered and there is a constant misty fog hanging in the air. A good day to be inside, just relaxing with the family. Ahhhhh......