Hope you enjoy virtually celebrating with us.
Jen & co
Yesterday we took the kids out the front door for the first time in a few weeks because of lockdown. As a family, we have tried to be as safe as we can in lockdown by Rob and I going out once a week. I have two auto-immune diseases and a few other health conditions, I am susceptible to picking things up and last year had ten rounds of antibiotics. The kids have been in the back garden a lot and we have done lots of activities but we felt it was time to take a drive out.
Anyway, we miss Geocaching and so I thought we could do a drive around scavenger hunt whilst we did some errands. I made it so that Robyn could understand it with the little pictures next to it, all you have to do is tick the box when you find it. Robyn wasn’t in the mood to join in but did right at the end of our journey when Sophie and Riley had completed theirs.
GilmourAdventures Scavenger Hunt Printable
It’s not the best printable in the world because its what I drew myself but I hope it comes in use. The kids loved it and we had a special extra at the end which was put onto a sticker, it was “family member”. We drove by my dads and he came to see them from a safe distance to wave, it made their day and mine.
I don’t think the kids have ever been so excited to go on a little car trip. We did see an awesome 911copcar on our journey as well. We are going to share our adventure on TikTok later today.
Remember to stay safe.
Jen, The Gilmours
That’s right, we are on TikTok.
To be honest we joined last year but had only used it a few times. Lockdown meant we have had more time to scroll and more time to be creative. The kids have had “dance” lessons and I am sure more to come. It’s just a bit of fun.
You can find us at @GilmourFamily
Hope to see you over there.
The Gilmours
Local graffiti artist No Hone came up with a fab idea to bring graffiti indoors whilst we are in lockdown. No Hone is takings children’s names and making them into graffiti-style colour sheets.
Sophie, Riley and Robyn had so much creative fun in colouring them in. I even let them have the sharpies and the finished by laminating them and putting them on their bedroom doors.
And here’s the result…
If you would like your childs name made into a graffiti outline simply get in touch with No Hone, see the details below:
Hope you are coping ok with lockdown.
The Gilmours
Last week we were out caching and nature called for our youngest, Robyn is four. Most of the caching we have done with Robyn was when she was in nappies or short walks when she was getting used to life without them.
BUT,,, going on a longer Geocaching hunt meant that it was going to happen sometime. We felt for her when she looked around and saw no buildings, “where are the toilets?” she asked. She wasn’t pleased about weeing in the bushes as I had put it and it took a little while for her to finally wee but she did it. Celebrations went around the family and we all started chanting “weeing in the wilderness” and high fiving her one by one. Sophie and Riley were so excited about it being her first time weeing in the bushes.
Of course, I was prepared and had some toilet roll in the rucksack. To be honest this became a must after our first ever LONG Geocaching trail a few years ago, I am going to have to leave it there though.
If you are planning on doing a long Geocaching trail, always have toilet roll or at least tissues with you. We also have nappy bags.
Jen
For quite some time we have been wondering how we can keep up with the kids when they are ahead of us on their scooters. After a while, we finally got to the point; ‘if you can’t beat them, join them’.
In January I purchased an adult push scooter for Rob after thinking about it for around nine months, we never had the money to dive into getting them. It was Rob’s birthday so it was a perfect excuse, Decathlon is reasonable on price and the quality is great. We had bought the kid’s first scooters from there around three years ago. It was quite funny because Rob had thought I had bought him some furniture because the box was huge, he was like a kid on Christmas Day when all was revealed.
It was so popular that we decided to upgrade Riley’s and Sophie’s scooters as they have Birthdays in Jan and Feb, Robyn had her first scooter already from Christmas. It was just myself left without, but we had agreed that my Birthday present would be a scooter and there wasn’t that long to wait, Rob couldn’t wait until March and wanted to get it as soon as he could.
There we have it, a family gliding together into the distance.
The perfect place to go Geocaching on scooters with children is the old railway lines. We have been watching the new series of Walking Britains Lost Railway Lines for inspiration, starting close to home and we will strive a little further in the future. Planning on investing in camping equipment for our adventures.
We will keep you in the loop.
Enjoy this short clip of us scooting about whilst Geocaching.
[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pfq3HkTRWPw&w=560&h=315]
Jen & co.
When we found out there were souvenirs to be claimed on the last day of 2019 and the first day of 2020; we couldn’t avoid the urge.
Souvenirs in the Geocaching world are like digital badges on your profile and throughout your Geocaching adventures, sometimes there will be a challenge set to achieve them and sometimes it will because you found a cache in a different country.
To claim the individual souvenirs we had to find one cache on each day and I am glad to say that we DIT IT! We actually did it in 2018 as well but in 2017 we only managed to claim one as we were away.
New Year’s Eve and we managed to find a Geocache very local to us, we like to keep a few for emergency caching. Thankfully we can find micro’s nice and easy now. Our last cache of 2019 was Priory Road Cache and Dash (GC676GF).
Our caching year totals so far:
2017- 191
2018- 134
2019- 102
Despite the decline in finds we absolutely love Geocaching and 2020 we are going to aim to increase our finds. Things are a little different as we are now a family that works from home full time. We are looking forward to 2020.
2020 arrived and Rob is going to remind us all of this moment, the first find of the new year. A quick magnetic find and not that far from us, we were near Riplingham. 100 yards (GC6RKAD).
We didn’t stop there, we went on to find three more and had a lovely fresh New Years Day walk. We would have done more but it was a bitter cold despite the sun shining bright on us.
You can see they were all excited to be back out caching again but it can get competitive. Your dog will like this one (GC6RK9R).
Two new badges and an exciting caching year ahead planned.
The Gilmours
We have been to paint some pottery and it’s not something I have done since I was a child myself. Our eldest (Sophie) had been as part of a party and so we decided we should take Robyn and Riley on separate dates and enjoy some time. We usually do things together as a family and sometimes we forget to have that quality time together.
We went along to Tea & Bisque-it which is in Willerby and not that far from us.
Robyn was very excited at the thought and had no trouble in picking what she wanted to paint, Ariel. I chose a tealight holder and Rob chose a small gnome. Robyn was the first to get stuck in with her painting.
We enjoyed some light lunch whilst we were there and had a pleasant time. The food was delicious and we can recommend trying their desserts, especially the bonoffee cookie chessecake.
We were worried at thinking Robyn may not understand that we have to leave her Ariel to be finished but she absolutely fine and couldn’t wait to see what it would look like.
A week later and we went to pick up our pottery, it was actually ready way before then but we didn’t have the time to collect.
Here were the results:
We were so pleased with the outcome and will certainly be going back again. We found the pottery painting relaxing and it was in a nice environment with good food and friendly staff.
The Gilmours.
The other week we received an email providing us some statistics on the caches we have hidden.
I have to admit I was impressed with the total amount of times our caches have been found. We love reading the logs and finding out what others think of our hides.
If you haven’t found any of our cache’s yet here is a list of them available in East Yorkshire. We have plans for more and we hope to build a trail in the future.
View our caches here:
Travel Bug B&B is our most favourited cache, we did love placing this one out there to be found. All of them are child friendly, Carlton Micro and Amy Johnson are micro caches but the rest are big enough for some swag.
Happy Caching.
The Gilmour’s
Today we let the kids rule the day, that’s right! Yesterday Sophie and Riley received their school reports and because they were excellent we decided to let them take over what we do for the day.
We had four categories with three choices in each and they had to choose which one they wanted to do.
Outing
The kids unanimously chose Strawberry picking, it’s something we haven’t done as a family before so we were all excited and drove out to Eastfield Farm Strawberries.
What a fantastic time we had and yes they had to have their own punnet each, we will be eating strawberries all week. It is well worth the visit, the staff were friendly and the cheesecake was delicious (mummy and daddy needed encouragement since the kids were in charge for the day).
Lunch
The kids chose McDonalds and they ate the lot, although this wasn’t the easiest out of the three choices they didn’t mind the little wait in the car on the way back from Hollym.
Activity
The kids chose the park but it wasn’t warm enough for the splash section to run so we went from West Park in Hull to the Peter Pan Park for a change. They loved every moment and especially because they were in charge.
Pudding
The kids chose the Pick n Mix and this was the last part of the kids rule the day although they did come home and choose a movie as well as tea (they still had some room from the strawberries).
All in all the day was a success and we will be doing this again next year (if not before) for the weekend of the kids getting their report.
Sophie says “I think we should do it again and other parents should try it with their children”
Riley says “It was a good idea I have been waiting all week so we can rule the day”
The Gilmour’s