Laying a cache

I've laid 19 caches so far, and Sarah, being a newbie wanted to lay her first cache with my input. So when I went up there a few weeks ago we set about laying her first cache. She wanted it nearby for easy maintenance and quite sensibly wanted to just do one first to see how things were with having to maintain a cache before considering doing any more. She'd already picked the area, so one afternoon we went over and had a good look around. We found a likely spot and proceeded to lay the cache and cover it up with the usual cacher's stick'o'flage. Then we preceded to have great fun 'marking' the co-ordinates of the cache. I had my simple garmin e-trex and Sarah had a Garmin Oregon 450. Hers seemed to have been closer in the co-ordinates when we were out caching yesterday and it was interesting to note that most of her co-ords for this cache were always one or two points fewer than mine. We both wandered in and out of the bushes with our garmins - it was great fun! :) A nice start with a nice traditional. Just need to go home and set it up on the website. But first I thought I might plant a multi-stage Church Micro. There aren't too many Church Micros 'up North' so I thought it would be good to spread the word, as it were. We walked up to the church and made sure we found a spot that was more than the obligatory 520 feet from Sarah's new cache and another one nearby. All was good, we found a great spot the magnetic nano after having found some gravestones for the clues. As it started to rain we headed home with all our figures. We started with Sarah's cache and set about filling in the straight forward online form. It is pretty easy to complete, as long as you have done your homework and gotten all the required details. When we completed the form, we pinged it off for the local volunteer reviewer to check it met all the geocaching criteria before being published. What we didn't know as we set about loading my one up, chatting and then getting ready to come back home, is that the reviewer had already published her cache and two cachers had found it!! All within an hour. I couldn't believe it!! Our local cacher can take several days before reviewing and commenting if there were any issues. Thankfully Sarah's cache had gone ahead with no problems at all. Now I wish I had signed the log and been a FTF.! Never mind. It was quite cold and getting dark plus it was raining, so despite getting lost trying to get out of the city and ending up going past Sarah's house and the cache twice, we didn't stop so I could sign the log. She was very excited and watched eagerly as another cacher came by later. It is always very exciting to lay your first cache. The online form and advice given on the website is very straight forward, making it easy for everyone to lay their first cache.