COOKin' Down South: 2nd Annual W & C New Year Celebration

This is the second New Years we have spent with the Willoughby family.

We love this family and have such a great time with them.

They hosted New Years with us again this year and were so kind as to share their house with six crazy Cooks for five days.

That'll exhaust anyone for sure!

I'm going to break down our trip into sections.

First off:

Exchanging Christmas presents:

We gave the Willoughbys each a card. Each card had an N followed by a number and a W followed by a number.

Wendy was the first to figure it out. It's Geocache time!!

Each geocache was planted in a spot that was significant to that person.

The first one was at a baseball field.

Trying to figure out where the coordinates lead.

Nope, not there . . .

Perplexed.

Dumpster Diving. Not there either.

Wait a minute . . . There it is!

He found it!

I forgot to get a pic of him holding his find. So here's the pic I took before we left.

Onto the second find. This one was at a Music & Arts Center.

Trying to figure out the coordinates.

"This way!"

Another perplexed child.

"Oh, here it is! I don't want to put my hands in there!"

She braved it though and got the prize.

A piano ornament for the piano player.

Now onto the 3rd cache.

Cautiously looking into a cement cylinder.

"This is a great hideout for snakes." Oops. Guess being from the north, you really don't think of those kinds of things. :)

Like her daughter, she braved it and got her cache.

Her geocache was at a school. Although I did accidentally plant it at an elementary school instead of a high school. I could've swore she taught 5th grade! Oh well. It's the thought that counts. :)

The 4th and final cache.

Leading the little ones to find his ornament.

The coordinates lead here . . . but where's the cache?

Oh, here it is under this handy dandy cement rock in the middle of the woods. How convenient.

What in the world is this?

Doesn't look like an ornament to me.

No Kyle, it's not. It's the Neck Stretcher 3000!

Wendy unable to control her laughter.

He's holding the instructions to said "Neck Stretcher 3000". Although since he came up with it last year at New Years, he should know how to use it.

This was an inside joke from last year. We were playing the game of Guesstures and instead of guessing the words "turtle neck", he shouted out "neck stretcher!" I promised him I'd make it for him for Christmas the next year. I delivered.

He was actually the lucky one. His neck stayed warm as we all froze to death. (Oh, and it was found at a spinal care place.)

The Willoughby's got us a gift that they insisted was not very good. (They were wrong btw) The family is deep in thought.

What could it be???

Are you ready to open it? Why YES!!

"It's Awesome!" was all we could say over and over and over again.

We LOVE this kind of thing. They had it at NASA's Rocket & Science Center last year and my kids spent most of there time playing with it. Yeah, this gift is gonna get a lot of use.

Karaoke

One of our favorite things to do!

Kyle singing & family dancing

Matt belting out some tunes.

More singing

Kyle and Wendy doing a lovely duet.

Matt rocking a country song.

Matt on vocals with Kyle on air-guitar

Friends singing together

Geocaching

Another one of our favorite things to do!

Putting my baby over the barbed wire fence to get a geocache.

FAIL! Geocache is missing. (We didn't leave him on that side of the barbed wire btw. haha!)

Another cache search

And another one found! Score 1 for the Willoughbys.

But wait, The Cooks come back with a geocache find!

Thanks Honey. 1 for the Cooks!

The contest continues. Who will find the 3rd one??

Score 2 for the Willoughbys

And the final cache of the day - Searching on the abandoned railroad tracks

My two little guys

And of course, they had to make a silly face too.

Miss Wendy finds the last one. Final Score: Willoughbys 3 Cooks 1

Reenacting a geocache find from last year. (the pic got deleted off the camera)

Yeah, it was that important to photograph. We searched for hours on two separate occasions to find this micro-cache.

Girlie Time!

The girls took some time away from the boys to eat at a cafe in downtown Senoia.

I can't remember the real name of this cafe, I'm assuming it's "The Senoia Cafe", but I can't remember. The only name I remember is the one they used for a TV Series. So, here we are at "The Woodbury Cafe" (and no, we didn't see any zombies)