Junk Mail at its Best

Thanks to all the free samples of stuff I send away for, I have my name on more than just a few mailing lists. Sometimes, if the kids help me get the mail, I let them claim the USPS spam as their own. Since Miss K ran to the mailbox with me today, she received two pieces of mail for her. One was just a magazine renewal form, she opened it then "read it" and was quickly bored with it. The second piece was from some organization providing doctor services to the world. I'm sure somewhere in the literature I could find the words "all for the cost of a cup of coffee a day." Upon opening it, she squealed with delight at finding a treasure map. She proclaimed "X marks the spot" as she held it up to show me. Sure enough, it was a treasure map – a map of the world that we placed on the floor. I pointed out a few highlights like where we live and our often discussed Hawaii. We left it alone in anticipation of Miss M's arrival from school shortly.

So Miss M isn't home very long before Miss K proudly points out her new treasure map. Before heading off for naps, we spent a great deal of time sailing around it. We had a Playskool type ship filled with a hodge podge crew of Snow White, a few dwarves, a few different Doras, and Ariel… and a stowaway horse from one of the ports of call. I would say "This is Antarctica. It's always very cold here." Then the girls would sail the boat to Antarctica and start to disembark. I warned "It's very cold; don't forget hats, mittens, jackets… all of it!" One by one, the crew confirmed their proper attire and jumped ship to explore. We went to Africa to find elephants and giraffe (and that's as much as I was able to say before I heard "Let's go find the elephants!" and the ship was en route to Africa. We explored the desert where we found camels, desert fox and lizards. We checked out the kangaroo and koala bears in Australia before finally heading back home to take our nap. The map is currently laying on the floor in the living room with its entire crew asleep on North America. The captains are upstairs in their beds, resting.

I can honestly say that I have never had so much fun with a piece of junk mail.