Happy Labor Day!

Happy Labor Day to one and all. I hope you all had a wonderful labor-free day! We had a little family day today and went to Colossal Cave Mountain Park. It's just a hop skip and jump from our house in Vail and was a nice little family outing.

There were two parts to the park, the cave and a ranch that had lots of things that looked like the kids would enjoy. We spent most of our day at the ranch. One of the activites was "sluicing" for gems. We bought a bag of dirt with gems in them and Rebekah got to "sluice" for them. You may be asking: "What in tarnation is sluicing!?" We didn't know either but let Rebekah demonstrate.

Step 1: Dump some of the dirt from the bag into your sluicer. (A wooden frame with a screen in it) Or perhaps this contraption is called a sluice - I'm not sure, but in any case you use it to sluice.

The dirt pre sluicing

Step 2: Imerse the screen in the water and shake it so the dirt falls through the screen.

Step 3: Smile pretty while Mommy takes a picture.

Step 4: Pick out the gems!

We actually got a nice little bag full - Rebekah was able to "sluice" three or four piles of dirt from the bag. She was a pro by the end.


Alex amused himself by taking handfuls of dirt from the ground and throwing them into the water and then splashing the water everywhere!

The joy of being 1!

Up next, the "petting zoo" It was free so we really can't complian but it didn't consist of much. There was a small mule, a pony and two goats. None of which were very excited about being petted by small children. One of the goats did stick his head through the fence for a bit, Rebekah loved it. It was also fun to climb the fence as pictured here.

We also went on a 20 minute wagon ride, contrary to what you might think from the look on their faces, the kids loved it.

Probably the best part of the whole day was the "treasure hunt" the kids did. They gave us these blue sheets at the park entrance and we had to look for the blue boxes (pictured behind Bryan) where there was a punch to punch a hole in the paper for that location. There were probably 15 or so boxes and Rebekah had a blast looking for them. Alex even got the hang of it and would yell out "Boo box! Boo box!" when he spied one. And then at the end they both got a "prize" which was a pretty little stone that they got to pick out themselves.

OH I almost forgot - the treasure hunt may have been trumped by the Push-ups after lunch!