The last few weeks have been a whirlwind of travel, family, dirt and new experiences for the kidders. It began with a week long visit to Karen’s family in DE. Jon’s family from Hawaii was able to come in, so we had a rare chance to visit with all Karen’s brothers & families. Warren and Nicole have met everyone in the past, but I think this is the first time they will remember.

One of the goals for this trip to DE was to get the kids to the beach. We headed south to Cape Henlopen, a traditional spot for the Reeses. It’s the quintessential East Coast beach, complete with large crowd blanked around the boardwalk access — all in all, everything a beach is supposed to be to people living on this end of the country.

Nicole and Warren both got right into the waves. This surprised us a bit as Warren woke up scared to go to the beach that morning (there might be sharks!). The surf was high, so we were able to get some body-boarding in & the kids got to experience getting bowled over by the ocean. (Nicole was quite proud of herself for going all the way underwater.) The rest of the day was spent running in and out of the waves, catching sand crabs and digging in the sand.

Later in the week, Nicole and Warren got to see their first in-theater movie, “Wall-E”. It’s billed as a kids movie and rated G, but I think 90% of it was way over kid’s heads. There was more social criticism than entertainment in it — but there was also lots of robots running, flying, scooting, and bouncing around, so fun was had by all. Well, almost… Nicole declared herself bored about 45 minutes in, but I suspect that would have been true of any movie.

Last week JP, Josie & Jordan came from Indiana to go hunting Herkimer “diamonds” with us. This was a trip JP & I had discussed for literally years. Middleville, NY is about 3 hours from here, at the base of the Adirondacks. We camped & worked at the Ace of Diamonds Mine. There are other options in the area, but most rock-hounds end up at the Ace.

This was Nicole & Warren’s first camping trip and first real rock-hounding experience. They did very well camping (using sleeping bags in the tent actually out-shined ’smores). Rock picking was a bit harder on them. We had a few problems, mostly associated with just being 4 year olds.

The first day, we tried breaking some of the hard rock beneath the pocket layer of the mine (feel free to ask if you really want to know). That involves real sledge & wedge work, not exactly 4 year old fare. We got a few good crystals out of it, but it was just too boring for JP’s girls & our kids. We had good luck hunting about the debris piles for crystals others missed; the Thorpes went home with some really nice pieces.

Because the first day was rough around the edges, we debated leaving a day earlier than planned. But we finally decided to stay. We changed venue a bit though and went for the well-weathered material at the top of the hill. The crystals there are not as nice as those in the deeper layers, but they’re much easier to get to — and you can work in the shade. A big plus since day 2 turned out to be cloudless & around 90.

The kids had a lot more fun working in the dirt, but only made it to about mid-day before they were obviously ready to head home. Even so, I’d call it a successful trip for a first go. They’re already talking fondly of it and speculating on which friend they’ll take along next time.

So the summer is half gone. Things promise to get quicker from here. Karen has a conference coming up in Bloomington, I have a business trip later in August and the semester begins in earnest shortly after. It’s almost time to start thinking about where to go for a family rock hunt next year…. we haven’t been to the South in quite a while.