What Day is it?

I think it's Wednesday. Time marches by quickly and there just isn't must lounging time here on vacation. There is an insane amount of work to be done for us camper dwelling folks.

Loads of laundry done: At least 15. Seriously. We've been gone for 11 days and we've done more then 15 loads. That's not really including bedding either..unless you count a few items here and there based on need.

When I last wrote, I hinted about diamonds. The kids and I went prospecting and sluicing in Herkimer, New York. Dh stayed at the camper with Lily and the rest of us walked across the way to the Herkimer Diamond Mine. I paid $42 admittance for the 4 big kids and I to get hammers and entrance to the 'mines' which were really 2 big piles of rocks.

It was hot. We smashed away but didn't really get anything good although we saw lot of possibilities. I think we needed better tools to be able to free the tiny 'diamonds' (quartz) from their stony homes. A chisel would have been very helpful. We tried anyway. And it was pretty fun. Kendall mosied up to people and told them she hadn't found a single thing. One man, a professional prospector working from a hole in the ground, told her she needed to look harder. Later, the man's lady friend gave Kendall a diamond which I thought was very nice but I had a little talk with Kendall about not fishing for gifts from people.

Since it was so hot, the hottest day of our entire trip, we didn't stay as long as I would have liked. On our way out, I bought a $10 bag of dirt and we sluiced using their water thingy outside. We found lots of great gems!

The rest of the day was spent getting cleaned up and then the kids tried swimming again. Somehow, the temp plummetted and it was too cold for swimming so they shivered at the edge. I dove in and it was...refreshing...bone chilling cold.

I can't remember if this was the day I took my wheel to the playground. I am seriously sad that I just haven't had hardly any time to spin. We have been moving too much for that. I did get to predraft all of 'Nate' so I am hoping I can spin him soon...maybe when we park at my SIL's house this weekend.

Tuesday was a long road day. In our initial planning, we planned on stopping at Niagara Falls but we nixed those plans after we got a late start and a falls diversion would have put us behind schedule. As we approached, I asked dh how far off our path was it? 16 miles. We both decided to heck with the schedule and we stopped anyway. It was a whirlwind stop. We were in and out in about an hour. We didn't get to see everything but we can say that we went and we saw the falls. Lily was especially impressed. Mia hated it. She was freaked out by the panhandler who approached us in the parking lot. He was really agressive and it ticked my dh off.

I finished my 2nd monkey sock just as we arrived at Niagara Falls...ends woven in and everything!

We stayed at a Flying J last night...don't ask me where. Tonight we are back to a regular campground. We arrived here, got set up and I watched the kids on the playground while working on my next sock project...socks for Mia with yarn purchased in NYC. They will be short socks so I hope they go quickly. I'm not following a pattern on these ones. This playground has lots and lots of DIRT under the equipment. Kendall rolled around it in wearing her wonderful wallaby....the only 'jacket' she has so it meant another laundry round for me. And we had somehow already accumulated 2 full loads anyway.

I met a longtime online friend, Rachel, at the Hanna Andersson outlet here. I was in heaven walking among all the cute clothes. Oh my how I love HA clothes on my girls. On the way there, Mia proclaimed that she hates it along with Gymboree but that didn't stop her from finding 2 things that she liked from the racks. I could have bought a ton more but I exercised great restraint which dh would probably disagree with. Rachel has 2 daughters and they seemed to hit it off with my kids, especially Kendall and her oldest dd.

Now we have tentatively planned a quick day trip to Chicago tomorrow. I think we will check out one of the museums there.