Movie and a Mine

This past weekend was surprisingly eventful.  On Friday we decided to venture out and take the kids out on a date.  As Brian is an avid blood donor, we've been racking up on free movie tickets (the Blood Connection gives 2 tickets per donation).  So we thought it would be a good time to take the kids out for our first family movie at the theater.  Madagascar 3 was showing and they like animals and the circus, so we thought this was going to be a shoe in!  Notice how we thought a lot about this.  Well, we thought wrong.  Riley sat in Brian's lap for all of 5 minutes (she doesn't exactly weigh enough to keep the seat down, so it just kind of ate her) before she started pacing back and forth on our row.  Then she ventured out to the stairs to inspect the lights.  Then she started going up and down the stairs.  Aiden decided this looked like more fun than watching the movie, so he got in on the step action too.  Ella started asking "When is it going to be over?  How much longer?"  So we just decided to can the whole thing.  Maybe we'll revisit this again in 5 years...maybe. 

Saturday morning we got up bright and early and headed out for Diamond Hill Mine.  I had seen it on Groupon the day before, never even knew this place existed.  I knew we wouldn't have any problems with the kids being interested in digging for 'treasure'.  Not to mention Brian kind of has a thing for dirt.  I don't get it, but for some reason they like it.  I liked sitting back and watching everybody knowing that I did this, I made this happen for them...Dirt Digging Heaven.  So, for the next 4 hours I was the cool mom who didn't care if the kids got dirty and the awesome wife who didn't make her husband do chores on his day off.  Sometimes you just gotta hand it to yourself...you done good.

Looks like a big one...

 

Got it!

 

"Check out this big rock, Mom!"

 

 

 I'm surrounded by squatters!!

And here's some of their treasures...

Ella's "crystals".  Not much of a hand model am I?

Aiden's "dinosaur jaw".

 

Skeletal Quartz

 

I think this looks like a clump of wisdom teeth.  Is there a dentist in need of a paper weight?

 

Brian's take homes, garden rocks.   He wasn't able to take the one he took so much time to dig out.  Unfortunately it was gargantuan, and we needed an extra 3 guys and a wheel barrow to attempt to bring it back.  That's just the way it goes sometimes.

 I don't really know what we are going to do with all of these rocks gems.  Hope they don't have any high expectations for this weekend because I got nothin'.