Jen came for a visit last week. It was so fun to have her here. The last time that she came to visit I had just been put onto bed-rest at home. I was spending the majority of my time drinking water and eating protein (which also meant that my favorite hangout was the loo.) Needless to say, it wasn't a fun-filled weekend.

This time we thought we'd do things a little differently. We hung out with the kids, went to the Discovery Place, the Pumpkin Farm at Riverbend, Reed's Gold Mine and this po-dunk town called Hiddenite (named after the stone found only in this town.) We even had time to make some orange rolls. And despite our busy schedule Jen and I were able to do a lot of catching up. A lot of that was during the wee hours of the evening but we also talked a lot while we were out and about. During one of these drives she was telling me a story about some hot-headed golfers who got so angry at her when she walked on the edge of the golf course that they started hitting balls at her. Balls were whizzing by her head before she was able to get off the course. A few minutes later we heard a conversation between the twins that went like this: Austin - Who were those naughty men? Laina - What did they do? Austin - they were naughty on the green. Laina - Why? Austin - They threw balls from the green at Jen.
Even though they didn't have a clue what 'the green' was they managed to get a gist of the whole experience. I guess I should really start paying attention to what I'm saying in front of the kiddies.

Here we were at Riverbend Farm. The slides at that place are almost as fun as the pumpkin patch.

And here we are in this little town of Hiddenite which is about 1/2 hour nw from Statesville. We drove to this little mine and spent the afternoon sifting through dirt. That may not sound like a whole lot of fun but it really was. In each bucket we found all sorts of semi-precious gems. The kids loved finding the stones...well, who am I kidding? We all loved finding little treasures. It was a little addicting. We all got a pretty good idea how powerful the ol' gold rush crave would have been in '49. We even went down to the river to see if we could find anything there. That actually served as a literal cold splash of water in the face (the boys threw a huge rock right in front of me) and are passion cooled after about 20 min. of playing around in the water. But it was a fun new adventure for all of us and one that the kids are still talking about.