Andelin Adventures

Today we went on an adventure to Topaz Mountain. We drove quite a way to get there, and ended up needing to do some backtracking and circling around to try to find it because the GPS was giving us directions that weren’t quite accurate, then we noticed signs on the road pointing in another direction.

It was quite windy when we got there. I think the weather would have been plenty warm enough if the wind would have only stopped blowing. I ended up keeping Seth in the van the whole time. We had a picnic lunch in the van before we let the kids out to explore (we figured we would make them eat before they went out and got all dirty).

Adam heard that he was supposed to get out and go try to find some rocks. He didn’t realize we were talking about small yellow rocks. He was so excited to find this big rock:

The rock was surprisingly light for its size, but that is because it is volcanic rock.

I think the kids found it difficult to sit down and focus on searching one place for some topaz. They spend most of their time wandering around and searching the surface instead of digging. Which means we didn’t really find anything.

These last few pictures I took from the comfort of the van, while I fed Seth. I love that I have a mega lens that I can put on my camera to capture things close up despite their being so far away from me. 🙂

The kids didn’t want to explore very long because it was so windy, so we decided that we would get going, but we decided that we would have to come back when the weather is a little warmer.

We had dinner at cousin’s house tonight and while we were there, all the kids disappeared. Laurel went downstairs to check up on them and found most of them all lined up thoroughly engrossed in watching Pippi Longstocking.

Ethan is working on the Citizenship in the Nation merit badge for boy scouts and Tyra is working on the Inside Government badge for girl scouts so we thought we would go check out the Utah state capitol building and get a couple of requirements signed off. There weren’t any guided tours happening today, so we got to just walk around at our own pace. We decided to start on the top floor and work our way down from there.

The murals up around the dome show some of the history of the state of Utah.

Last we saw the exhibits they had on the main floor. The kids were really impressed with the replica of the Liberty bell.

I really liked the chunk of Bertrandite. It is that white rock with veins of purple going through it:

Getting a picture of all of the kids in front of the capitol building didn’t work so well. They were all complaining of the sun being in their faces, and none were willing to just open their eyes and look somewhere else long enough for me to get a decent picture.

This year for the Blue and Gold, they decided to have a timeline of scouting events, that they put up around the room. That was pretty cool to see. They also gave each family a couple of bags of activities for the kids to play with while we waited for the meeting to start. One  bag had a couple of twizzlers in it with instructions for tying different knots. Another one had pretzels and marshmallows and instructions for building towers. Dinner was potatoes, and chili, with rolls and salad. I made a tray of rolls to contribute to the meal since that was the assignment for families of Bear scouts. I think there was a problem with the rsvp’s though, because they ran out of chili long before everyone got food. I enjoyed watching the slide show that they had put together, the kids liked to watch it and find the pictures with Jeremy or Kyle in them. I spent most of the evening holding and feeding Seth, so I didn’t get to take any pictures. 🙁