I've always heard the term "boys will eat you out of house and home" and heard tales from friends with boys about the sheer quantities of food they eat. My kids have never been very big eaters, and have always been so incredibly active, so I've never really thought much about it. Until now.

Matthew, who will turn 8 this week, is suddenly gaining weight.  He's gained several pounds over the past few months, but not gotten any taller. I know it's typical of kids going through a growth spurt to grow up then out, or out then up.  And he's eating like a horse.  Seriously. This kid can put away food.  Typical growth spurt "symptoms". But he's definitely gotten "thick". and it's starting to concern me.

He's happy to eat healthy food (although he's just as happy to eat junk food), but he's just plain hungry. He could easily eat three sandwiches in a sitting.

So now I'm worried. I've always had a weight problem and work really hard to keep my weight down and my body healthy. It's something I've struggled with my entire adult life and don't want to see my kids suffer with weight problems too. I'm acutely aware of the statistics. Childhood obesity has more than doubled in children in the past 30 years and in 2010 one in a third children were considered overweight or obese. http://www.cdc.gov/healthyyouth/obesity/facts.htm

Is this a simple growth spurt? Do I just sit patiently and wait for him to grow a few inches to catch up with his weight?

Or do I start counting his calories and limiting his food?

If he says he's hungry do I tell him to learn to eat less?  Growing up (before we worried so much about weight) we just were taught to feed growing kids. But now we're so health conscious we don't want to raise obese kids. And I am very concerned about making sure my kids are healthy and not overweight.

So at what point do you shift from simple "growth spurt" to "weight problem"?

I've often talked about how Ben is my creative child. I never need to worry about having the "no more electronics!" speech with him because he rarely ever plays they. He's usually off in his room designing some kid of creative fort or doodling on a notebook.

Yesterday he asked me for tape, scissors and string and an hour later I found him in his room with a complete "laser tag" setup.  There were "lasers" everywhere and in order to make it successfully from the door to the bed we had to climb, crawl and shimmy like a scene straight out of Mission Impossible (although I'm not sure I pulled off the Tom Cruise role quite as well).

But what we really think is cool about Ben is his writing.  He constantly asks us for a "piece of paper and a pen!" (I say asks, but it's more like demands, like a 1950s CEO talking to his secretary "Get me a piece of paper and a pen!!"").  What I didn't realize until I was cleaning recently is that he writes more than we realized. We found notebooks FULL of sketches, writings, chicken scratch, thoughts, names, etc.  

And I even found one where he's started his own diary.  It has the date at the top for every day of the week and then a comment on whether it was a "good day" or a "bad day" and then why.  I'm so in love with this side of his personality.  We bought him a white board easel for Christmas and it was one of those "big" (in size, I mean) gifts that we were afraid would just take up space and not get used. I was so wrong. That white board has seen so much love. It's great to wake up every day to see what he's written.

I hope that he continues to hone is love for writing and drawing.  It's wonderful to see the creativity just flow from his mind.

This Saturday is our Anniversary. We will celebrate 11 years of marriage.  I think anniversaries are a lot like birthdays, we make a big deal out of them early on and then in later years they become just another special day.  We've always tried to celebrate our special days, though, whether they be birthdays or anniversaries.  

Our first anniversary we took a trip to Europe. We spent half our trip in England and the other half in France. We spent the day of our first anniversary in Paris.  Talk about setting the bar high.

The second year we had just bought our house. And I had to teach a night class. So we ended up eating hot dogs on our patio (on white bread, no less, we had run out of buns). That's a sharp contrast from the year before before.

Since then we've had some years where we've been able to sneak away for a night (my mom will often come into town and spend the night with the kids) and some where we've just gone to dinner.

This year we had just planned a dinner out but my mom called yesterday and said she had decided to come in for the weekend. So we got an overnight "pass". We booked a hotel in the city (I've never spent the night in a hotel in my own city before, but it sounds like fun!) and we're trying to figure out what we want to do for the evening.

This morning we had the "gift" discussion.  We typically get each other gifts, but there's really nothing either of us wants or needs ,and we're taking a big vacation in a few weeks, so we talked about skipping the gifts this year. But then felt like maybe that felt like we were "giving up" a little.  Like we've stopped trying. What do you think?

Do you make a big deal out of your anniversary?

As an active family, we're always looking for new, active things to do together.  We run, we bike, we like to camp and take hikes.  I'd much rather be outdoors than indoors any day of the week. And we're knee deep in the thick of fighting the "electronic" wars with Matthew (where he just wants to play electronics all day unless we give him something much better to do).

The problem is that finding things to do can get both exhausting and expensive.  I've made it my business, though this site, to find the most interesting things for families to do in Pittsburgh. And we really do love it. But sometimes we get tired of planned activities and crowds. 

So last week someone recommended we try a new app for my iPhone called Geocaching.  Years and years ago we had an old Garmin GPS and we intended to try out Geocaching. We never did do it, but it always sounded like fun.  Now with two boys who love adventure it sounded like the perfect time to try it.

So I downloaded the free demo of the app and we set out for adventure.

We found the first location right away and ended up crawling through some woods right near our house exploring an old piece of construction equipment that was seemingly just abandoned in the woods just off the side of the road. I've driven by it every day for years and never knew it was there.  We never did find the actual cache for that one (it's possible someone stole it) but we had fun looking.  We tried two more our first day and founded them without too much trouble.

Upon finding the treasure, each had a little screw-top container with a log inside that we could sign to show we'd been there. One had some extra room so it had "tradeables" (little army guys) that we could take and leave something in return.  

We did three caches our first day and ended up finding some really interesting areas near our house that we never even knew existed.  

And the best part is, the boys are hooked. And so are we.

I decided to upgrade to the paid app ($10) which I've heard is well worth it. The paid app gives you unlimited caches nearby, while the free demo only gives you the three closest ones. 

I think we're going to spend a lot of time this summer finding hidden treasures and exploring our area.  I'd highly recommend it.

http://www.geocaching.com/