Last Fling Before School

Natalie's school didn't start until Tuesday so we went on a little overnight trip to a diamond field in a State Park in Arkansas. We have been wanting to go for almost a year, so we were all excited to finally go. A week after Natalie started chemo my diamond wedding ring accidently scratched her while I was taking care of her. Since she had no immune system it started to get infected very quicky and they had to add an extra heavy duty IV antibiotic to fight it. My clumsiness made me nervous and I sent my wedding ring home to make sure I didn't do that again. It made me sad since I LOVE my ring and the memories it brings to mind of my sweet man. I haven't worn my ring since. Once I felt comfortable wearing it again, it no longer fit because I was pregnant. Still doesn't fit. Digging for diamonds made me think of my beautiful ring.

It would've been cool to find a diamond to show Natalie and Stephen, but we had lots of fun just looking. And it was good just being together.

The kids were amazed at the giant jacuzzi bathtub in our hotel. Natalie even loved it so much that she decided to "double wash" her hair:)

I love this picture of The Colonel!
When we woke up in the morning and went outside, it was SO humid that the lens of my camera fogged up! Despite the foggy morning, the day was HOT!!
These old full size victorian dolls were a big hit with Natalie.
The cute little hotel we stayed at was called Southern Belle and it was a bit older and stuck in the 80's. The decor was kind of cheesy but it was sweet.
Despite the intense heat, we had a lot of fun digging for diamonds and along the way we found LOTS of pretty rocks. I was even worse than the kids with the rock collecting, I have had a weakness for that since I was little. Ask David he has carried pocketfuls of rocks in his pockets on hikes with me in the past:)



We got to the diamond field early but after awhile we sought out the shade of the wet search method of diamond finding. There was a lot of mud outside the pavilion and somehow that ended up getting messy....Natalie was so excited and asked if she could make her first mudball. I couldn't turn her down, but once the fun was over she was begging to go back to the hotel (which we were already checked out of) to clean up. She did not like being messy. The Colonel was covered with mud and he didn't care a bit!
The faces Stephen was making in all my pictures was hilarious. I liked this one a lot.