Farm Treasure Hunt

Growing up we had a big white chest, full of dress up clothes. The chest was kept in the attic, which made it the perfect size and location for big brother's to put their little sister in, sit on top of it, and cause them to have terrible claustrophobia when they grew up. Once in the chest your mother could only hear faint muffled screams coming from upstairs, quickly covered up by your loving brother. I digress... the chest is now on mom's front porch with all our old dress up clothes still in it. During this past trip to OK Zane and I looked inside, only to find the best dress up clothes ever, a pirate hat and pirate pants!!! This led to hours of pirate fun on the farm, with the highlight being a good old fashion treasure hunt around the farm with Grandma, Brendan, and Uncle Brent!!

First up was dressing the part. These pirate pants were from an old Halloween costume of Able's. I didn't realize until after the treasure hunt that the pants were really for a much old child, but Grandma made them work by tucking them into his pants. They were nice and poofy just like Zane's pirate song says is required of all good pirates. (See the large chest to the right, where I thought I would surely meet my maker a time or two.)

 Grandma and Zane tried digging for buried treasure, but no luck. If only we had known there were pirate clothes available, we could have buried some treasure or made a map, but we just had to wing it instead.

 First treasure that was found, an egg!!!! It wasn't exactly buried, but it was quite the treasure. Zane kept it in the pocket of his coat for most of the treasure hunt, right up to the point that he started to fall down, it was then taken into protective custody.

BURIED TREASURE!!!!!

 Uncle Brent and Brendan joined the fun at this point, with sword sticks to help us fight off all our foes along the way. Mom had mowed this path through her pasture during the summer. It made for a perfect treasure hunting path around the farm.

 Here is Zane in all his get up. The hat was also a little large, and blew off from time to time, but it was all part of the adventure.

 Finally we decided we should bury our own treasure, pine cones from a tree in the tree row. We used Great  Grandpa Dotter's WWII shovel to bury this treasure so it was even more special.

 Here are the boys putting the treasure in the hole. These pine cones were extra spikey, so it was difficult work, but they were very brave pirates.

 The last order of business was determining how many paces south of the telephone pole our buried treasure was, in order to make an accurate map for future treasure hunts. Here is Brendan counting paces.

The costume was fun for the whole weekend. Kyser and Zane had pirate train rides, which were obviously a blast. 

 Then later Everett got in the action, wearing the pirate hat while working on sitting up. Zane put it on him and he of course didn't mind at all, sooo cute!!