Posting from my Blackberry, so formatting is not the easiest.

We returned from our family trip to Cape Code on the weekend and stayed over in Massena, NY. We brought a couple of our friends children to church, as they were heading to Long Island. Pray for the Hamelin family, one of their sons is sick and needs a healing.

AM Service - There were a couple of guests out, that was great. I spoke in a different fomat for Faith Apostolic in the AM, I incorporated some two-way communication. I introduced the messge with a description of geocaching, detailing all the elements involved in geocaching, and mentioned some of the recent caches we did while in Cape Cod.

Then, I asked how could geocaching relate to our faith journey, what could each element be a type of. This was to spur some interaction, even the guests participated. Then based on the responses I finished my talk.

PM Service - This message was based on Paul & Mars Hill. How to engage culture by finding the spiritual questions that the community around you are asking. Once you understand those questions they are asking then you minister to them based on those questions.

God is already at work in people’s lives before we even get on the scene. That is why we need to understand the cultural environment we are in.

The last two days spent in Cape Cod, rain for one day and travel back to Massena NY the other day.

Day 7 we took a short trip up to the North end of the Cape, to Provincetown. This town is where the Pilgrams stayed for 40 days before going to Plymouth. It definately has a New England fishing town look to it.

We did two geocaches while there, went for two tracking items. Got them and bringing them back up to Canada. One cache was located in the sand dunes, this was one tough trek, massive slops of sand to climb. Thought I was in a desert, except for the lack of extreme heat.

The drive back was such a scenic drive, and it seemed that I used less gas, must be because I had the wheel bearing changed, I guess.

Yesterday we went on the recommendation of the activity co-ordinator to the historic town of Sandwich. She said there were lots of local shops to walk through and shop in. Disappointed on that one, not sure what she was thinking, we only went in one shop. Not many shops, a couple at most. Odd recommendation.

There were a couple of good things about the trip however; historic route 6A and the sea captain towns, and the boardwalk.

Route 6A is rated as one of the most scenic in the USA.

We took a nice walk on the boardwalk, lots of the boards had names of people engraved or sayings. Beautiful location.

In the evening we setoff to find a couple of geocaches to get the trackable geocoins. However, someone did not update the cache logs because the items were not there. The first one we did was a nice short walk into the woods. The second one was a bit of a funny one, I couldn’t find the parking, the driving directions on my blackberry took me into two homes private driveway. So we knocked on the door of one home, no one answered. So we thought the cache wasn’t to far away on the GPS, let’s go for it. We found the location fast and jumped in the van and drove away. The whole time I was thinking one of the home owners was going to flatten our tires, or call the cops because they saw 4 of us roaming around the property.

In the evening relaxing and swimming in the pool.

Up in the morning yesterday we decided to do some geocaching. The GM at the resort is a geocacher and I asked him for a cache to try. He suggested Eagle Point. The location was amazing, nice trail in and around a huge pond (more like a lake). The cache was hidden on a highpoint offering a tremendous view. We dropped the last geocoin we brought down, the iCache geocoin.

After that cache, we went to Shiverick Shipyard. This was a microcache, easy find, but offered some interesting information about the shipyard and the vessals that were built there; clippers and schooners.

The afternoon was a bit of a downer as I had to get the van fixed, right side front bearing and hub. The parts were high enough, but labor was a killer, 90USD for an hour. Ouch. Prayer is needed for my member of the junky car club.

After I got back, went and played racquetball and a swim with the kids. I had to teach the boys how to play a real game of racquetball.

In the evening we all sat down for country night at American Idol.

When I checked the geocache locations on Cape Cod by Brewster one of the ones that was interesting was Tidal. It was located out in the ocean when the tide went out.

We headed out and spent a couple of hours walking to the location. We started from a bad parking spot, so it took some time to get there. When we got close within a few hundred meters the tide was starting to come back in, and the water was to deep to continue. But it was cool to walk on the ocean floor.

Later in the day we went to Nauset Beach. The waves were big and the kids thought it was pretty cool to throw rocks in the ocean. They also played with a big yellow lab on the beach. We were hoping to see some seals, but no luck on that front.

Driving around the small towns on the Cape is beautiful, some amazing looking homes. It would be really nice to come back in the summer.

Yesterday was the first day on the Cape, we took it pretty easy due to the long drive the day before.

We went swimming in the pool a couple of times. The boys played racquetball and shuffleboard.

We checked out the high tide at one of the local beaches.

We did some geocaching, we dropped some geocoins we brought from Canada. We took a geocoin that we will bring back to Canada. The cache was located by one of the many ponds on Cape Cod. Absolutely beautiful spot. The walk on the trail was very peaceful.

Lack of WiFi in the condo makes it hard to post some photos. Will try sometime this week when I am in the Commons building.

This past week of my vacation our family has been spending time doing the following things together, (we stayed home for Christmas this year):

• Christmas Lights - Did the tour of the lights downtown around City Hall, Confederation Park and Parliament Hill. Then through Taffey Lane, there were a few houses not done up as much this year, but we did venture into someone’s backyard that was nicely lit up with LEDs off their patio, the homeowner was telling us that it makes for a nice dinner scene.
• Geocaching - Went into the Larose forest just south of Bourget and did our first winter geocache.  Went through at some points of deep snow, mid-thigh high snow.  Took some nice winter pictures of the kids climbing some downed trees.
• Wii - Playing the new Nintendo Wii: Wii Sports and Wii Fit. Will be connecting with the Wii Speak to talk with my parents and so the kids can play their aunt on Mario Kart. (We limit who our kids connect over the Internet on the computer and consoles)
• Christmas Eve Service - Before service we went over to Perkins to have dinner together, and then attended Christmas Eve service at our church in Ottawa.
• Massena, NY - Last weekend we spent a couple of nights over in Massena, and this coming weekend we will go down on Saturday night as well.
• Next week - A few more activities planned.

Tags: FamilyTime, Christmas Lights, Geocaching, Wii, Wii Speak, Christmas Eve Service, Massena NY, Christmas, Massena, New York, Cornwall

Here is a slideshow of some geocaching pictures

Last night my daughter and I went for a geocache and we took a side road that turned into a dirt road, which led to me trying to make my way around a bug puddle. The result, $60+ tow truck pulled us out. No way I was getting it out. I even tried having her push the gas pedal as I tried to push us out, no go.

The pics are some locations where found some geocaches.

BubbleShare: Share photos -

A few weeks ago we had dinner with the family my wife does daycare for. During the evening they introduced to me geocaching, explained what it is about and what caches they have found etc. It sounded like a good hobby for the family to try out. It would also add a different element to our walks through the forest that my daughter just loves to do. We bought a GPS unit off ebay and last week we tried out the two closest caches planted near our house.

Tonight after supper my youngest son and I took the GPS unit off to a small island near our house to track down a Travel Bug (check the definition below). It was getting dark so we brought a flash light with us. Once we got there, my son was excited to find this trackable item in the cache. We were making our way through some long grass and ferns before we found it at the base of some trees. I had to end up piggybacking my son through for most of the trek. The comment of the night that he made, “Dad if a wild animal takes me away you would chase after it wouldn’t you?” Classic.

I am post some pictures of our trek in the next few days….that is if I do not forget.

Definition - geocaching is a high-tech treasure hunting game played throughout the world by adventure seekers equipped with GPS devices. The basic idea is to locate hidden containers, called geocaches, outdoors and then share your experiences online. Geocaching is enjoyed by people from all age groups, with a strong sense of community and support for the environment.

Travel Bug - Simply put, a Groundspeak Travel Bug is a trackable tag that you attach to an item. This allows you to track your item on Geocaching.com. The item becomes a hitchhiker that is carried from cache to cache (or person to person) in the real world and you can follow its progress online.