Rock On!

My son's Webelos Geology achievement badge was completed today with a trip to the Lucky Lake Gem Mine in fabulous McKinney, Virginia:

When I say fabulous, I really mean fabulously far away. Almost 2 hours, which was long for me.

I was worried that we'd get there and it just wouldn't be what we were hoping for (details are skinny on the website). We were very pleasantly surprised!

For starters, we got to dig ourselves:

There is an option to buy buckets of material (soil and rock and planted goodies) and sluice away at the giant sluicing area, but my son really wanted to dig.

Lots of muck and rocks to dig up and plop in a sieve. Once washed clean in the creek, the treasures start to show up:

I dug one spadeful - and struck it "rich" immediately:

Here's my daughter's haul for the day:

One of the best parts of the place is that a gemologist sits own with you when you're done to explain what each rock you have is:

My daughter was in sorting heaven!

Not sure how great this pic is, but this turned out to be my favorite rock from my daughter's haul. Naturally, we've already forgotten the name and forgot to get a copy of the handout, so now I'm not really sure why I'm posting this:

except that is looks like hay running through a crystal and is sometime known as Aphrodite's Hair. Cool!

My son found a Dalmatian Stone:

and you can tell why I had a hard time with Geology class in college. Cannot remember the real names to save my hide. Oh well, the common names are usually much more fun!

The trip was a culmination of a mini-unit study on geology at our house. After studying lots of rock books this week, we were excited to think that we might have found some petrified wood:

Turned out to be a piece of burnt wood (thus the charcoal marks on the picnic table) and a special type of rock.

Despite the long drive, the gem mine was a great trip. Not only were cool rocks in abundance, but to have someone handy for identification really made the education level worthwhile. The setting with the shade and picnic tables made for a comfortable place to spend a day and the staff couldn't have been more helpful.

No field trip is complete (at least for my group) without treats! McKinney seems to be completely frozen in time 50 years ago. Couldn't you see this place on and episode of "Happy Days"?

Once home, we tried out my son's gift shop purchase, a crack-by-yourself geode.

The chickens got wind of it all and decided to check it out ("No ladies, that's not an egg!").

And here's what we found inside:

Not as high-tech spectacular as could be, but more than expected and better than most. Just like our field trip!

Beach Bound

We had a chance to slip off to Virginia Beach for 1 night, so we jumped at the chance to use Daddy's free conference hotel room.

I packed lightly and we hit the beach hard.

I snapped photos:

My daughter really enjoyed the waves (when did she stop being the toddler afraid of waves bigger than her feet?):

Lots of sand castles and pit digging occurred:

Here's the other boogie boarder:

After our "relaxing" mini vacation, I drive home with my daughter only to get a call from my husband AFTER I passed through the tunnel that I had his car keys and had to turn around and go BACK through the tunnel. On a Friday afternoon. After at least a half-hour of stop-and-go congestion on the way back, I see this sign:

Glad some one's on top of the situation! In case you're wondering, it took almost 2 1/2 hours to drive from the beach through the tunnel twice and back to the beach. Longer than it "should" take to get home. But all ended well and we got home the long, scenic way.

I'm not sure that you get to call it a vacation when you spend more time in the car than on the sand...

Winchester

We wrapped up staycation by leaving town. A fitting finale, don't you think?

The kids and I headed to Winchester to visit with my parents and a friend of mine from high school. We stayed at a hotel to have more time to explore on our own time. My parents are just not into leaving the house unless it involves a packaged bus tour. And I'm pretty sure they wouldn't want to hang out "downtown", so the kids and I made an adventure of it one morning. It was like returning to my old stomping grounds.

I lived all summer at the Handley Library. Dad would give me a ride into town at some point in the day and pick me up after work. I think that I read every book in the kids' biography section. It was fun to show my kids the building, but once inside, everything was different. And I couldn't really tell what was different and what was my faulty memories - must be what Alzheimer's feels like setting in.

But the library was beautiful. Lots of curves and round shapes in the original part, like these stairs:

Here's the stained glass dome from inside (how could I now remember that!):

And the entrance and view of the original building:

And don't you know that Winchester is the (self-proclaimed) Apple Capitol of the World? Here's the proof, that my daughter is trying to eat:

And a fancy one showing famous locals such as James Wood (founder? and namesake of my high school - Go Colonels!) and Stonewall Jackson (who headquartered there one winter):

We even made it to Stonewall Jackson's Headquarters and discovered that canon barrels are the same diameter as a child's arm:

and unearthed Mary Tyler Moore's connection to the HQ - her great x ? grandfather was the owner of the home and while he was recuperating from a Civil War injury elsewhere, offered his home to Jackson for use as a winter headquarters. So there. It's not really a vacation until momma makes you go through a museum.

All that walking made us hungry, so we hit the downtown pedestrian mall (which used to be filled when I was a kid with mentally ill adults and general riff-raff shopping at the five-and-dime and the liquor store):

to check out the Snow White:

They've installed a pick-up window and added outdoor seating, so we were in seventh heaven. Listen developers and planners: if you want to revitalize a pedestrian mall - add outdoor seating and plenty of restaurants. It's that simple. And cut down on the crazy bums. That helps, too.

Look at all that love on some greasy paper:

And tots! They had tater tots:

Who says you can't go back home?

Special Forces

My boy came home from Special Forces camp this week, looking like a warrior. The face paint!

"So, can I get a picture?" I asked. "Sure, mom!" came the reply.

Now that's much better:

Hoo-rah!

Beautiful Lengths

My daughter has been growing her hair for a l-o-n-g time and it was time for a change. I asked her to consider donating her hair, so she grew it a little longer. So, with ballet buns behind us for another year, Tuesday was the day.

We had planned a quick trip to the dermatologist and then off to have our nails done while big brother was battling it out at Special Forces camp. Real girl stuff! But along the way, Erin wound up with a case of poison ivy on her hands and miserable afternoon from the doctor, so we called an audible and decided to go ahead and chop off her hair right then and there.

We rolled into the Hair Cuttery and came out much lighter.

We're sending the ponytail to Beautiful Lengths - program sponsored by Pantene. It's much like Locks for Love, but the length requirement is a friendlier 8 inches.

She looks so cute with short hair again. And after a trip to my real stylist this morning to undo the Hair Cuttery chopping, she looks really cute!

Being totally biased, I have to say that I LOVE her hair color. A light brown, or "cinnamon honey", I like to call it. And it just started getting lighter from the pool time and sun. Sigh.

But the good news (besides cancer patients getting good looking wigs) is that summer just got a lot cooler!

Hawk Man

We had our field trip experience at home today. Our friend, Mr. Andy, brought his red-tailed hawk to show the kids. We invited a few families to see and had a great afternoon of it.

Here's Mr. Andy and Dart (or is it Dash?):

Tubby particularly enjoyed the attention from everyone (after he jumped in Mr. Andy's car and generally made the hawk nervous):

We learned lots of tidbits about hawks. For instance, it's the talons and not the beak that do the attacking. 

We learned lots of names of all the hawk gear (which quickly "flew" out of my head). We even learned why this red-tailed hawk has no red tail (not mature yet).

Just being so close to a bird that only see soaring or perched far away was pretty stunning. He was gorgeous. Mr. Andy has permits to capture and train wild birds, which he then lets go at about age 3 when they become mature males. The details of the capturing and care of the birds was fascinating.

The hawk didn't fly for us as it is the wrong time of year for him (Mr. Andy explained that he's just too fat now to do much but perch on a shady limb) and the kids couldn't pet the bird (see talons above), but they were fascinated by the gear, including the glove (which also has a name!).

It was a great field trip - at home!

Craftman

My son is working through his Webelos activity badges for Cub Scouts. One of the assignments was to create a display for awards. I was thinking shadow box; four pieces and you're done. He, of course, had constructed the Taj Mahal in his mind. It was time for a reckoning.

We headed to the salvage/scrap store in hopes of Cool Things, but managed to get some neat rusty bolts and some trim. Not quite enough. So next we headed to the hardware store and wound up with brass tubing, metal faucet handles, and a miter saw. But it was worth it:

Not quite the Taj, but he was quite proud of constructing it. It'll will look nice if his mom ever gets around to helping him hang it in his room.

Memorial Day Weekend

I'd like to say that we spent the weekend being good Americans and remembering the reason for our holiday, but I'd be lying. We spent the weekend thinking only of ourselves. Lots of relaxing, playing for HOURS and seeing the kids' cousins.

We spent time blowing these:

I kept getting distracted by this all weekend:

The kids practiced their synchronized swimming:

and being daredevils:

but mostly just having fun with each other:

Thanks to the fallen ones who secured our "pursuit of happiness".