More Endocrinology And Some Geocaching

Thanks for all your feedback on the endo issue. We are hoping that the tests will point out that there is no growth hormone issue going on, we should get the results next week. Two more things I forgot to mention last time.One was that he noticed that Cees has a very high palate. He says that that sometimes correlates with pituitary gland issues. I just did some web surfing, and this seems unlikely in his case. The second thing was that Cees used to be on inhaled steroids for the first years of his life. The endocrinologist said that that might cause growth issues too. I haven't really looked into that yet, I always thought that the inhaled steroids didn't have many side effects.

Oh, he also asked me in an accusatory tone whether we used only low fat items. He told me that Cees really needs the fat. If you know me, you would know that I am not a low fat food type of person. If anything, I try to boost nutrition in everything, usually by adding protein, but I have never avoided fat in foods. I think he was sure the 'no juice' attitude had to go together with fattophobia.

And now for something completely different: geocaching! We were supposed to be caching on Saturday, but a snow storm got in the way. I know some people will comment that they are surprised that that was holding me back, so I'll admit that I did go out hiking in the woods to check on our new cache. I just didn't want to drive anywhere.

On Sunday, I couldn't stand it anymore though, so we spent a few hours digging out from the snow storm, and then we hit the road to Burlington, where we were going to do urban caches. They have so many more caches around there than we do here. Not fair! We had a wonderful day. It was our family, my friend M and my friend I who is in a wheel chair. My friend M had tried to do a Manchester urban cache, but she felt so conspicuous, standing in the middle of Manchester with a GPS, all by herself. She figured we would be a lot less conspicuous with seven blonde kids, a woman in a wheelchair, and two 'normal' people. Yes, you can stop laughing now!

Here are some logs.

We were going to do this one on our way to the Halloween Cache Bash, but it didn't work out that time. Today we did find it though! I happily and carelessly walked up the slope, and suddenly found myself flat on my face in the snow. On closer inspection, it turned out that it wasn't just snow, it was snow hiding a 2 inch layer of ice. Very slippery!

It was good that baby Sylvia wasn't in her customary position in my sling, but instead was complaining about being held by mosaica. But at least she was safely in the van. A car came up to check out our fogged up van, but when he saw Mosaica and Sylvia in the front, he decided that we weren't there for off label use. Or at least not for the off label use he was hoping for.

The GPS was very unhelpful, taking us about everywhere but where the cache turned out to be. The snow was unhelpful too, but enabled us to see cool deer tracks. Flyingfisher eventually found it by using a stick to poke in the snow at likely places. There was this typical plink! noise of a cache, as opposed to just sticks, pine needles, or fallen down leaves.

The next problem was extracting the cache from the ice it was embedded in. We managed to do it by applying our knowledge of levers. I was afraid the cache would be frozen solid, but luckily it wasn't. TNLNSL.

The way down was interesting. There still was the 2 inch layer of ice underneath the snow and it is a bit steep at places. Oggette #4 and Mosaica had placed bets on whether I would come down on my butt or my feet. They both won...

And here's a log for a cache which was located in a mall in Burlington, a very sneaky one. We had to hunt for a while before we discovered it.

When I told the Oggettes that we were going to do a bunch of urban caches, Tara was not impressed. 'I don't want to go caching!!! How the heck can we get to AIRBORNE caches????' After some explanations about the real meaning or urban, she was willing to reconsider :-)

We used to live close to here, so it was fun driving around in Burlington and recognizing everything. I even recognized the parking garage, and discovered that the OggMobile fit in it. Well, as long as we ducked at the appropriate times.

The kids were elated when we discovered the escalators. I don't think Erik had ever even been on one. We had to use them a few times, Erik kept calling them 'moving stairs'. I explained to him that they were called escalators, so later he referred to them as 'stairvators'.

Very clever hide, it took us a while to find it. Most people were too busy staring at the flock of Oggettes to pay much attention to our searching for the cache.

We came home after midnight, which meant that we had two kids asleep! And now we are in the middle of another snow / ice storm, and couldn't go geocaching today either.