A Glance at our Weekend in Philipsburg

For the long weekend, we took a trip to Georgetown Lake with Grandma Betty, and family friends Scott and Barbara. 

 The house we stayed in had a gorgeous view of lake from the back deck!

 After spending the morning mining for sapphires, we spent Saturday evening relaxing around the campfire.

 You can't have a campfire without hot dogs!

 When I was working on our gallery wall in our room, I realized Perry and I have *very few* photos together, so I'm trying to be more diligent in giving the camera to someone else. How cute are we?!

 But I love this picture of Grandma and Hunter a little more!

Is that really JP in a green chair? Who would have thought...

After a wonderful night playing dominoes (and winning if I may add), we all hit the hay exhausted. Sunday morning we went back to Gem Mountain before heading into Philipsburg for lunch and a stroll around downtown. 

If you've heard anything about Philipsburg, you know that they have an *amazing* candy shop called 'The Sweet Palace.' Go to this place!

 

 The wall are lined with candy. I was drawn into the sucker sticks, or whatever you call them.

 There are buckets and buckets of candy!

 

 SO much to choose from!

 Fortunately for JP, he just had to find the green ones... Unfortunately for Hunter, he didn't eat breakfast OR lunch so he missed out on the opportunity to pick out candy. What a bummer!

Green candy...Yumm!

Tell us where you're from: Rudyard?! Who did I know that I just missed?! 

 I just love all the old building this little town has. Completely in love!

 Most of the group - minus Scott and Charlotte

We had lunch at Doe Brothers and it was delicious! They have the best chicken tenders and fries! After our stroll around town, we stopped back in for ice cream. 

 After checking out of the house we rented, we drove through Philipsburg one more time so Hunter and JP could play at the elementary school park. Is this not just an awesome looking school?

 It reminded me of Dragon's Hallow in Missoula.

 Except this one had a jail!

 These boys wore themselves out, Perry included!

 I, however, discovered this amazing chair swing. So relaxing! 

 Check out this stud. I am in love with his new glasses. 

Charlotte was a little angel during the whole trip, even though her naps were few and short. 

Gem Mountain in Philipsburg, MT

A couple months ago, I mentioned to Perry that I would like to go to the sapphire mine near Philipsburg to mine for sapphires sometime. A couple days later, Grandma reserved a house for us for Memorial Day weekend.  For the past week, the boys counted down the days. After a crazy week finishing up preschool and soccer, I gladly welcomed a little vacation!

We arrived in Philipsburg around 11a Saturday morning to meet up with my parents so they could join us in the search for sapphires. After getting there, we realized that most of the businesses in the downtown area were closed (due to religious reasons, I believe) so we headed out to Gem Mountain to look for sapphires, since their store in town wasn't fully staffed for it. Highly recommend going out to the mountain instead of doing it in town (mountain > garage)!

We were a little surprised as to how many people were already there when we finally pulled in, but were more surprised at the amount of people when we left!

Gem Mountain is approximately 5 miles from the actual mine. To find your sapphires, you buy one of these white buckets for $20, or 7 for $120, and what you find is yours to keep. Hunter picked mine and Perry's first bucket, and he picked pretty good!

You first dump a bit of your bucket into the screen...

 ...and take it to the water trough in the middle of the area to wash all the sand off. There was a lot of shaking and sifting in the cold water! Grandma was soaking wet by the end of the morning. 

Once your rocks are clean, you flip it over onto the table, and if you washed and sifted correctly, the sapphires would be at the bottom of the screen, so when it's flipped over they are on the top. In this picture, you can see the round clear/green-looking one in the center. When they're wet, the sapphires look like pieces of glass so they are *fairly* easy to find. On Sunday when we were there, we picked a table in the sun, and they were even easier to find. 

 I think it's safe to say everyone walked away from the mountain with a fair amount of stones. 

 My dad came along and enjoyed himself too, especially when he found this beauty! 

 

 We all spent a good two hours digging through our buckets before packing up.

Hunter even helped Barbara search for gems for a little while.

That is, when he and JP weren't up to no good... 

...on this dirt pile! I'm still dreading washing these clothes...

 How many people can look through the same pile at once? Hahaha!

 We went to Gem Mountain on Saturday with my parents, and again on Sunday. This is what Perry and I found on Saturday. Although you can't really tell, two of these are PINK! Unfortunately, they are too small to be cut and treated. :(

On Sunday we picked two awesome buckets and scored quite a few big stones in various colors. Between the two days, we found 13 stones that were able to be heat treated and cut. Having them heat treated gives them a deeper color. After they are treated, they'll be cut (or maybe it's the other way around) and then they'll send them back to us so we can do with them as we please. With that many stones, I'll be able to make some pretty cool jewelry! Unfortunately, it'll take somewhere between 6-9 months to get them back... Now I wait!

It's Physical Therapy Time for Charli

Last week at Charlotte's *one year* appointment, her pediatrician recommended she start going to physical therapy for her leg. There's not necessarily anything wrong with it, other than she just doesn't use it to get around. She said that if she doesn't learn how to use it, she'll have a hard time learning how later in life when it comes time for her to play sports.

All my kids have crawled differently; Hunter used hands and feet, JP did the standard crawling, and Charlotte scoots, like this. 

Today she went in for an evaluation at the physical therapy office for kids. She did great! Her doctor was so impressed at how willing Charlotte was to work with a stranger and how long of an attention span she had. 

These are all the things Charlotte needs to work on with me during play time. We've been busy since we left the office, so by nap time she was exhausted with all the extra work she did in the morning. I was thankful for the hour-longer-than-normal nap she took. Although she is scheduled to go to PT twice a week for the next month, we'll stop if she starts walking before then. And in the meantime, I have an awesome friend who will hang out with Hunter and JP while Charli is building her muscles. Hooray! 

Cousin Casey + Lilac Parade

Charlotte and I had a busy weekend. Since Perry was taking Hunter and JP to the cabin to burn Grandma's burn pile and do a few other tasks, Charli and I took advantage of the free weekend and took a quick trip to Spokane. I was originally going to go to Spokane to see 'Wicked', the Broadway play, but since I had Charlotte with, it didn't work out for me, so Kim rode with and met up with my mom and went to the play together. Pretty jealous...

But I'm glad I went anyways because Charlotte was able to hang out with cousin Casey for a little bit before we met up with a friend of mine and her family. 

 

They weren't sure what to think of each other. 

 Charlotte is fairly used to having to share her toys and having her brothers take toys from her, but Casey isn't too keen on the idea quite yet. When he tried to share, it usually left him looking confused. 

 Like this, as if he were thinking, "Who do you think you are playing with my toys?"

 Before they started fighting, Kim and I put him on his walker to see how skilled he was. 

To say he loves it is probably and understatement!

Charlotte knows what she doing. She pinned him in up against the table and started ramming him with it....

As the day progressed, Kim, Robin, and my mom took naps while I showed Kile how to make and color fondant. (Casey's birthday is coming up soon!) We finished up just before Kelsey and her family stopped by to pick Charlotte and I up for dinner and evening out. We managed to get a killer parking spot downtown on our way to eat at Red Robin, which we weren't expecting since the Lilac Parade was going on later that evening.

*Side note* I feel silly admitting this, but I've never really been to a parade before. Obviously I've been to our school's homecoming parade, but those had 15? floats in them. This one had 208 floats/bands and was about 2 miles long. 

 Usually when my family eats out, we pack along Charli's strap-on high chair because restaurant high chairs just don't work for her because she so little. To get into Red Robin sooner, we had her use a booster instead. I was impressed with how well she stayed in it! She did tip over a few time though, but she remained strapped in! So much better than her slipping out of the bottom of the high chairs... And that little cutie in the background was so nice to share bits of his food with her! Gavin is the coolest 2.5 year old I've met ;)

After dinner, we had just enough time to walk a few blocks back to the car to get our chairs for the Lilac parade. I had the *wonderful* opportunity to enjoy the bagpipers as they marched pass. I also enjoyed the people walking behind the horses as designated "Pooper Scoopers."

-Video to be inserted here- I'm too impatient to wait for it to upload tonight....

But my favorite was the old ladies :) Kile and Chris ended up at the Lilac parade too and they were her favorite as well!

 This morning was a wonderful morning to sleep in, but I think I woke Charlotte up a little too early...

Kim drove my mom to back to Missoula since she was catching a cold and Robin snagged a couple snuggles from the kids before heading out to church. With the house to ourselves, and a little extra time for me, I helped Kile sculpt the fondant we made. I won't post the picture in fear of spoiling the surprise cake theme, but we both made a couple cute animals. By the time we finished miss Charlotte was overdue for nap in the car.