Houston Gem and Mineral Show

So this isn't quite the post you were expecting, but this came first so we'll start here.  Our friend Mary, came to town for the Buddy Walk so we picked her up at the airport and then we went on a field trip to check out the Rock Show, as we have been calling it.  Travis has been looking forward to this forever!  He is really into rocks to the point of my needing to put a limit to how many can come into the house.  It's fun to feed his passion by going to events like this.

We arrived early, before a lot of school groups arrived so we got first dibs on some of the kids stuff.  This was one of the museums in town.  They brought shark teeth for all the kids and lots of other things to touch and pick up.  The people were all so very friendly and knowledgeable.  They wanted the kids to ask questions and touch everything.  And our boys did!

This was our first year to go to this show and the website didn't give us a whole lot of information about what to expect.  But fortunately we have a very talkative son and he started up a conversation with someone at therapy and she gave us the low down on what not to miss.  The one thing we knew was that we had to go to the tent outside and pound concrete.  The boys got to be paleontologists and search for fossils (plastic dinosaurs).  After being properly fitted with goggles they were given hammers and screwdrivers to chip away at the concrete.  Daddy helped Justin, but Travis went to town all by himself.  We were the first people there so all the volunteers surrounded the boys to watch them and one even offered to take pictures since I had Alaina strapped to my front.  We ended up with approximately 35 pictures of the boys beating concrete.  It was hysterical!

Justin couldn't manage to keep on his goggles.  They kept coming off and then he put them back on whatever way he could!

 They had so much fun and finally the director had to say, "Okay, that's great. I think you're done." Pause while the boys keep pounding. "Great job. Now let's leave some for someone else. You can come back later." Pause. "I think we have a group coming in now...." Randy and I finally managed to drag the boys away and promise we would come back later.

Then we went on to the sluice.  For $5 you could buy a bucket of dirt (properly loaded with mineral and petrified wood for the kids to "discover") and then you went down to the running water to dump it in the boxes with wire screens to clean the dirt away.  The boys each got some dirt and they had fun seeing what they could find. 

Justin wasn't so good at shaking the pan so Mary shook him instead!

 

 

Then the man had a chart to show us what we found.  He even said that there was a topaz in Travis' haul that wasn't supposed to be there.  But we haven't been able to figure out which one it is quite yet!

 

Then we wandered through the area of items for sale.  There were some amazing gems and jewelry!  Plus geodes and other interesting Texas fossils.  And lots of items from all over the world.  We came across a woman who taught us about coprolite.  She started off by saying that when they are out in the field and they come across something new and unfamiliar they do the lick test to see if it is something that can be polished.  Then she brought out the coprolite for the boys to lick.  I had to get a picture of that!  We will never forget that lesson!

 

We found a demonstration of a man cutting and polishing a stone.  And his accomplice playing the soprano saxophone.  They were great teachers with great passion for their work.  Travis and Justin had a great time watching them. 

 

Then we met a man who had built his own machines to polish stones into spheres.  He is a member of the Gem and Mineral Society and you could see his interest and passion for what he did.  He had three different machines, each rigged for different phases of the process, from the initial rough buffing down to the fine polishing.  He used the simplest motors and pieced together funnels, the ends of baseball bats, salt shakers, and old tin buckets to make the perfect rock polishing system.  It was so interesting!

 

We had such a good time learning about minerals and fossils.  I really had very little knowledge about these minerals and rocks in general I really enjoyed it more than I really thought I would.  My favorites were the geodes.  They look so unassuming until you crack them open.  Then they sparkle brilliantly!  I like that.  I really tried to get Travis to see how awesome that is and he just couldn't get into it.  God made something rather dull and boring until someone said, "Hey, I wonder what this looks like on the inside?"  That must have made God laugh!

 

I really didn't know what to expect at the Show but it turned out fabulously for our first experience.  We will do it again next year for sure!