Playing with money

We've got geocaching travel bugs and Flat Stanley so we're plenty busy tracking and plotting those adventures on the map. But we also, on occasion, track dollar bills. Where's George is website that allows people to track dollar bills that are marked with the website's name. We recently ran across a bill marked with a Where's George stamp so we logged it on the site when we got home. It turned out it was newly registered and traveled to Cumberland all the way from .... Westbrook (we've run in to several bills originating from this city so we know there's a big Where's George fan living there). Most of the money we have logged on the site has been from Maine but we don't always play the game (mostly because cash doesn't seems to hang out long at our house). The girls think the game is fun, especially since they saw the National Treasure movie with its reference to conspiracy theories about the American dollar bill. We found a website - MoneyFactory.gov - that offers up lots of facts about American currency and what each symbol/notation means on the bills as well as the history behind it. The kids were fascinated (and so was I). But tracking dollar bills isn't the only fun we have with currency. L. also collects state quarters. She checks the USMint.gov state quarters program minting schedule periodically so she knows when the next state quarter is coming out (then she tells her grandpa so he can look for them for her). And I admit that it is a bit addictive as I often catch myself looking at quarters to find new ones too. (I had a penny collection as a kid and never did manage to fill up every space with the appropriate penny year. I can't shake the feeling that it should have been complete before I lost track of it. I guess L. is going to reap the benefits of me helping her find these coins so she feels a sense of completion with her collection.) L.'s been collecting the quarters since 2005 (along with the Westward Journal nickel series) and with only three more quarters to go, she's getting a little anxious to complete the collection. Yet at the same time she really doesn't want it to end because she loves it. But she doesn't need to worry. After visiting the Treasury's website recently, we learned about a new penny redesign release program AND a D.C. and US Territories quarter series coming in 2009. Her coin collecting days are far from over. And I guess mine aren't either.