Tag Archives: Outdoor fun

Brooker Creek Preserve Field Trip

It’s Field Trip Day to Brooker Creek Preserve!!!

At approximately 8700 acres, Brooker Creek Preserve is the largest natural area in Pinellas County.  It consists primarily of forested wetlands and pine flatwoods.  The Preserve provides both a unique refuge for native flora and fauna as well as an opportunity for citizens to explore the natural beauty of wild Florida.

The Preserve also serves to protect a significant portion of the Brooker Creek Watershed. A complex of hiking and equestrian trails provide visitors an opportunity to explore the Preserve’s many ecosystems.

There were three different activities for the children.  They went into the museum where they watched a film and got to have a hands on experience with different furs, bones, bugs, etc.  They each got to net the swamp and see if they could find any critters.  Davy was the first to find one of two Crawfish, there was a tadpole, and they saw a Water Moccasin swim by.  And lastly, they got to go on a hike which went through 4 different ecosystems:  Pinewood Flats, Cypress Swamps, Oak Hammock, Sand Hill.

The kids loved it!

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Getting ready to load the bus… Davy, Liam, Pierce

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 Davy’s sweet teacher Mrs. Paggio…

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Filed under 2nd Grade, Berkeley Prep, Project Life 2013

OBX 3 – Wright Bros Memorial

IMG_0145After we left the Cape Hatteras Lighthouse we drove north into Nag’s Head.  Since Mr. Dan is a pilot and talks about flying his planes to the boys and Pixar is releasing a movie called Airplanes this summer, I thought that it would be fun for the boys to learn a little about the first flight ever taken.

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A 60-foot (18 m) granite monument, dedicated in 1932, is perched atop 90-foot-tall (27 m) Kill Devil Hill, commemorating the achievement of the Wright brothers. They conducted many of their glider tests on the massive shifting dune that was later stabilized to form Kill Devil Hill. Inscribed in capital letters along the base of the memorial tower is the phrase “In commemoration of the conquest of the air by the brothers Wilbur and Orville Wright conceived by genius achieved by dauntless resolution and unconquerable faith.” Atop the tower is a marine beacon, similar to one found in a lighthouse.

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Filed under National Parks and Monuments, North Carolina, Vacations

What Happened To The Tent??

photo (22)After what was one of the best family days, we crashed into bed around 10:30.  We were all exhausted from the day and couldn’t wait to get some sleep.  Andy and I love camping, we’ve camped all over the US and we have come to find that when sleeping on the ground it is most comfortable for us to open up all of the sleeping bags and spread them out.  We probably had 6 sleeping bags/blankets laid out, 5 pillows, and three fleece blankets for us to layer and curl up under. 

This tent that we were using was a 4-6 man tent.  It wasn’t large, but it wasn’t too small either.  It was 55 degrees, almost a little to chilly, so we each wore our pullover jackets and snuggled down under the blankets.  It was Andy, me, Matty, and Davy.  At 12:45, Matty sits up and starts projectile vomiting across this little tent.  All over himself, me, the blankets, his stuffed animals, pillows, just everything.  Instantly, we all wake up and move out-of-the-way.  So gross.  To top it all off we are in the middle of 100 other tents and it is soooo quiet out.  So, as the stench takes over, I start pushing Andy to get out of the tent and get some towels to help me clean this up.  He opens the tent and trips trying to get out ripping the whole bottom of the tent so now it won’t close.  He stumbles into one of our beach chairs to catch himself and breaks the chair.  Oh my…

I start throwing the nasty stuff out of tent and strip him out of his clothes.  Davy sleeps on his stomach and is just staring at us with big eyes, and little Matty is sitting on Davy’s back in just his pull up trying to stay out-of-the-way.  He was so cold. 

We eventually get the mess cleaned up as best we could, flip around to the other end of tent, and try to go back to sleep.  Somewhere along the way Andy and I start laughing at the absurdity of this situation and we can’t stop.  We are trying to be quiet, so I end up crying I was laughing so hard.

Needless to say, I didn’t get much sleep because every time Matty moved or moaned I thought another round was coming.  Several people asked us why we didn’t just pack up and go home, but it was dark, there were at least 100 tents all around us and we would have made a lot of noise trying to pack, and the car was way down the road in the parking lot.  It just didn’t make any sense.  The next morning Garrett said he heard something, he just thought it was an animal outside his tent.  By 8:15, Andy had the cars loaded and the poor tent was in the garbage can.  This was definitely a moment to remember.  🙂

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Filed under Cub Scouts, Random

Honeymoon Island

After our disappointment of not getting to the beach on Thursday, we were super excited when we woke up today and found the weather to be so beautiful.  So after we finished making Davy’s Pinebox Derby car and Mikey was picked up after Davy’s sleepover, we loaded up and headed out to the beach for a few hours.  This beach is the closest, it only takes us about 20 minutes to get there.  It isn’t the boys favorite, they call it ‘the rocky beach’, but it works and it is so pretty.  The guys played frisbee, Lily dug in the sand, and the boys made a huge rock pile.  Beautiful morning.

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Filed under Beach, Friends

Our First Geocache Find

For Davy’s birthday we gave him his first geocaching kit.  Now you may be asking what is geocaching, it is a real-world, outdoor treasure hunting game using GPS-enabled devices (such as your iphone). Participants navigate to a specific set of GPS coordinates and then attempt to find the geocache (container) hidden at that location.  There are almost 2 million hidden geocaches worldwide.  They are everywhere and most people don’t even know it.

Immediately Davy was like let’s go find one, so Andy pulled up the map to see where the nearest one was, and don’t you know there are several near our home with the first being only .5 mile away.  We had to go and see if it was there!  Brandie, Laurence, Ryla, and Layne decided to join us on our adventure.  Here is the provided clue to find the cache:

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Just in time to commemorate the last Halloween you may ever spend on this earth! Are you brave enough for the most terrifying, dangerous cache you have ever encountered? Will you emerge from the experience alive? Or will your blood be a feast for the Dark One supped from a drinking gourd that was once your skull?  (Note to parents: This is a safe, kid friendly cache. None of the above is true. Except for the part about your skull being used as a drinking gourd. That actually will happen.)

This cache was placed both to drop a cache in a big, tempting empty spot on the map and to commemorate having to get blood drawn here more times than I’d like. Originally it was going to be a micro, but I was inspired by the RainBowGirlz’ cool theme cache Creatures of the Night (GCT81E). There’s room for smaller and mid-sized trading items, and please try to keep your trades in line with the Halloween/horror theme of the cache. There’s a Dracula figurine for the FTF prize.

Additional Hints (Decrypt) – onfrbsgurovtgerr

Decryption Key

A|B|C|D|E|F|G|H|I|J|K|L|M
————————-
N|O|P|Q|R|S|T|U|V|W|X|Y|Z

(letter above equals below, and vice versa)

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It took Andy all of 3 seconds to say, “Oh, it’s over by the doctors office!”.  Sure enough, the compass lead us there.  The compass will bring you within 10 ft of the cache and then you are on your own to hunt it down.  We wandered behind the doctor’s office and into the woods.  The decrypt says, “base of the big tree”.  It took us about 10 minutes to find it, Davy was so excited.  The trinkets were small; Matty took a Halloween bookmark, Ryla took a small cow, and we replaced with a hairy spider.  What surprised us was the signed log.  There were two other families that we knew who had signed it before us.  It is fun to think about all of the families that do this together.  Can’t wait to see all of the fun places that we will adventure too….  www.geocaching.com

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Davy reaching in to pull it out.

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Filed under Geocaching, Krulik Family

Matty’s First Soccer Game

The time has finally arrived and it is Matty’s turn for team sports.  He loves soccer, so when registration for Westchase miniwee soccer came out we had to sign him up.  His team is called “Team Fusion”.  Each team has five players and each week they play the same team, our opponent team is “Team Mutiny”.  All of the children in miniwee wear the number 1.  Andy is one of the team coaches and Matty was so excited…you just can’t fake his beautiful happy face.

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Filed under Soccer

Burts Pumpkin Patch 2012

On our way home we decided to make a detour to Ellijay, Ga.  We were so close to the best pumpkin patch ever, that driving for a little bit longer really didn’t bother us too much.  Burt’s Pumpkin Patch is wonderful for families and the prices are so good.  We went on a two-mile hay ride, picked out several pumpkins to take home, and drank apple cider.  The boys had a great time.

 

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Filed under Fun Outings, Georgia, Vacations

Tubing on the Rainbow River

We were driving to church yesterday and brainstorming about what we wanted to do today, Monday Labor Day, and I had the thought, “Hey! Let’s go tubing!”  Andy thought that it was a great idea so a little before 8am this morning we loaded up in the car and headed north to Rainbow River in Dunellon, FL.

The drive took a little longer than an hour and a half.  We decided to go to Rainbow Springs State Park located at 10830 S. W. 180th Avenue Road Dunnellon, Florida 34432.  It was $10 per person and that included the tube and the tram ride.  The water was 72 degrees and the float trip was around 2 hours.

 

We weren’t even on the river for 15 minutes before we spotted an otter playing off to the side.  The kids saw lots of birds, fish, and Davy said he even saw a turtle.  What both boys loved the most were the dragonflies.  They were all over us and landed on our tubes, feet, arms, everywhere.  Along the way there were rope swings, tree jumping, and the water spray.

 

After we were done tubing, we drove the 7 miles over to the original State Park, Headsprings and had a picnic lunch.  At the base of the park grounds there was a large swimming hole.  It was crystal blue-green and the boys had a great time jumping into the river.  All in all today was a perfect day.  We are looking forward to heading back sometime soon… 🙂

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Filed under Fun Outings

Boating and Tubing on the Intercoastal

Sometimes there just aren’t enough words to be able to fully express the love and gratitude that one has for beautiful friends…

As I am currently unable to do much of anything, Kelly and Brian decided that they were not going to let this situation get everyone down.  Today, they packed up all the kids and took them out for a boat ride and lunch at Rotten Ralph’s .  They said that the weather was beautiful, the morning water was calm, and they even saw dolphins.  The boys had a wonderful time tubing and driving the boat.  We heard that Davy made the 25 mile an hour club and rode on the tube 5 or 6 times.  Love my brave boy. 

Thanks again Brian and Kelly… 🙂

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Filed under Anna Maria Vacation 2012, Carothers Family, Fun Outings, Vacations

Before Breakfast Beach Walk

The Weather Channel predicted that the percentage of rain today was going to be 70%, so when we woke up and saw the sun shining in through the bedroom windows we took advantage of the good weather and headed for the beach.  Forget the breakfast and forget the coffee…throw on those bathing suits and let’s go!!!  They would need to get their wiggles out at some point, so we figured now was as good as time as any to start.  We parked at the Rod n Reel pier and took the walkway over to Bean Point. 

Yesterday, this couple went walking by us with their hands loaded down with big shells, so we asked them where they found them and they said further down the beach where the currents hit the shore.  We were certain that we were going to find the most beautiful shells, and of course we didn’t find one.  We walked from one side of the island to the other…and nothing.

We had a wonderful morning and left the beach thoroughly exhausted… By the time we got back to the house the kids were ready for breakfast, and we were ready for coffee!

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Filed under Anna Maria Vacation 2012, Beach, Carothers Family, Vacations