My daughter manifests cats! Oh and we've been treasure hunting.

Treasure hunt #1 The first day we arrived at Grandma and Grandpa T.'s we decided to go to a local park to look for a geocache. For those not in the know, it's a high-tech version of hide-and-seek. Geocachers seek out hidden treasures utilizing GPS coordinates posted on the Internet by those hiding the cache. Unfortunately all of the pictures from this adventure were lost due to a power outage that has somehow fouled up the computer. ;o( It's so much fun, but the point was kind of lost on Aa.-girl as of course her 2 year old intellect did not understand the GPS unit. She did however enjoy choosing a treasure from the cache to keep and leaving a new one in the cache!

Treasure hunt #2 A few days later and we were (as previously mentioned) coloring rice. Following in Jen's footsteps again, we made a treasure bottle. If you haven't seen one, it contains the colored rice and any little "treasures" you wish to put in. An accompanying picture chart of what treasures are in the bottle helps in knowing when you've found them all.

Aa. wasn't as interested in it as I was but I think it's growing on her. I however am hooked as I have spent about 30 minutes with the darn thing and have yet to find the illusive dime. I'm beginning to believe it's vanished into the ether!

Treasure hunt #3 (here's where it gets interesting...) I made up 2 picture lists of "treasures" for Aa. girl to find around the house. One indoors and one outdoors. Aa. chose to do the outdoor hunt. We have yet to do the indoor hunt. I gave her the list sheet and a little pad of sticky notes. When a treasure was found (touched by Aa.-girl) she would put a sticky note on the corresponding treasure picture to indicate that it had been found.

This activity required a little prompting by me to make it fun and to keep Aa. focused on what she was looking for. A lot of language was used to lead her in the right direction. I will hype it up a little better next time, reduce the number of objects and discuss where we might find each object along the way.

At one point we had managed to find all but two of the treasures. The last two were animals so of course they could be unpredictable or unfindable. It was such a hot day so I thought that maybe all animals would be hiding in the shade. We decided to sit on the front porch for a bit to see what might "happen along" Now I must say that it was hot, a stinking hot 42deg. C (107deg F)!and I had absolutely no hope of a cat or even a crow appearing. I asked Aa. "would you like to go inside and do the indoor treasure hunt or would you like to stay here a while longer to see what comes along"? To my surprise and disappointment ( I wanted the air-conditioning by now) she wanted to stay to see what would happen. It wasn't 2 seconds after the words left her mouth that she joyfully exclaimed "A cat!!!" I couldn't believe my eyes. I was enchanted. the first thing I thought was "My daughter just manifested a cat, she can manifest cats" It was a magical moment, one of those ones that I simply won't forget.