We have gotten off to a great start this year!  I ended 2015 with kind of a sour mood, having been unable to get in the Christmas spirit and not being excited about the New Year.  I was focusing on all the difficulties we have encountered recently (unexpected medical bills, septic tank issues, a portion of the basement being flooded, a drastic increase in our monthly bills and more) with no improvements in the situation in sight. What did I have to look forward to but more of the same?

A Great Start

First Light 2016 Event Group Photo

It’s amazing how your outlook can be altered by just a few good days and a few good thoughts.  As I said in a previous post, I managed to drag the Crew out in the we hours of the morning on the first day of this year to watch the very first sunrise, with a crazy group of geocaching friends at the First Light 2016 event.  While at that event, Laura met a brand cacher that seemed to have a lot in common with her.  They hit it off and had a very good conversation.  The children mostly had a great time snuggling under a blanket in the truck bed.(hey…I guess I didn’t get them out of bed after all!!)  I had a great time discussing geocaches that I had found and helping other who had been having trouble finding them.

I also had a chance to get a little information on a cache that has alluded me for a year and a half.(GC57E2J – Achromatopsia & Apophenia)  After getting back home, We re-heated our coffee and worked on thawing out.  After a while, the children disappeared to their rooms to play on the new electronics they had received for Christmas and Laura decided to lay down and try to recoup some of the sleep I had caused her to lose.  I have never been one to sleep when the sun was up, so I decided the quiet was perfect for finally solving this evil cache.  I was not aware of just how evil it was until the answer started appearing before my eyes.  It was so simple, yet had vexed me for so long!!!  I couldn’t wait to get this cache off my list, but Laura still sleeping so I waited…..and waited …..and waited (patiently).

Fifth to Find

When she finally woke up, I convinced her that we had to go. ( I’m not sure what the rush was, it had already been found by four others and had been a year and a half)  We head to ground zero and I made very quick and anticlimactic grab, signed the log, took a picture for posterity and place it back in it hiding spot.  I can finally stop going to therapy, pulling my hair out and staring at the computer screen until I go blind!!!  Not a bad start, in fact a great start to the year!

On Saturday the 2nd, we went to Crazy Daisy’s Antiques , where we have a booth and three showcases to see how business had been and to straighten up a bit.  We were pleased with how busy it was and how things had picked up the last week of the year.  Laura placed a lot of new items that she had been working on and I checked on the cache that I had hidden outside the shop, GC5AP10 – A Daisy A Day #1 – TB Hotel (by the way TB stands for Travel Bug).  I was shocked to see four travel bug for me to discover.  I quickly took pictures of the tag numbers I would need to log them and placed it back to be found by another cacher.(More on finding, discovering and moving Travel Bugs in another post)

Flooded Double Trouble Cache

Afterwards, we headed over to another of my caches, GC5V94D – Double Trouble that had been flooded and washed away by the recent rains just to check how much longer it would be before I could get into replace it.  I could not believe my luck!!  Not only was I able to get to it, the ground was almost completely dry already.  I just happened to have several replacement geocache containers with me so I was able to get this one back in play only a week after disabling it. Another great start!!!

Finally, I got a notification of a new cache being listed not too far away in Cleveland.  It was already dark, but I really wanted to give it a try.  I talked Laura into going out night caching and we made the kids grudgingly come with us.  After a thirty-six minute drive and a ten minute walk in the dark and cold we were able to find the cache.  To make it even better we had been able to beat all of the other cachers to be the First to Find.  I found out later that we weren’t far ahead of the next geocacher, but it was enough.

Love Nugget Hershey’s Nugget holders in our Etsy Shop

And to top it all off, we opened a shop on Etsy, where we will be offering a growing assortment of handcrafted items for sell.  All in all it really has been a great start to the new year.