Ever take your kids hunting for buried treasure?

[skygazer]

Years ago, when my kids were little, my sister and I somehow thought of taking them out to look for pirate treasure. Her son was about 3 and my girls were maybe 4 and 5 and it seemed like a fun thing to do. Of course we lived in a landlocked state (Vermont) but we explained that pirates used to regularly cruise up the Connecticut River and maybe they'd buried treasure on the little island that lies between Vermont and New Hampshire.

So we secretly packed up some 'treasure' in a ziplock bag (pirates always used ziplocks - you knew that, right?) and we walked off to the river, over the bridge and onto the island. I 'scouted' ahead and quickly buried the treasure, marking it with a huge and obvious X on the sand then went back and we began searching.

We encouraged the kids to look for markings and steered them in the right direction but kids being kids, they were kind of gazing around vacantly and my oldest daughter was actually standing right on the X! Very funny - we finally had to point it out, they dug up the treasure with glee and my younger daughter snatched the whole thing and went racing off down the beach, shrieking "It's mine! It's mine! It's all mine!"

Much fun. Did you ever do silly stuff like that or did your parents do anything like it? My dad brought us all outside one Christmas morning to look at the deer tracks in the snow around our house, proof that Santa had really been there.