By this Author: ealonso

After leaving Little Rock we decided to go treasure hunting with the kids and Arkansas being a mine field with diamonds, crystals and many many mines we chose one which offered a variety of programs...

Wegner Crystal mine offers a 2 hour trip to open fields where you get down on your knees and search for crystals with a little shovel... you can stand in front of a man made sluice with running water where they put some gemstones imported from other countries... or you can go for the whole day in an area where they have mixed sand and crystal from the site so that the little ones find it easier to make discoveries...

We opted for the 2 hours trip as we had to head off to Hot Springs afterwards and we did not want to spend all day there.... but actually the site is very nice nested next to mount Ida with stunning views.

The warehouse where you can also buy any rocks from anywhere in the world is lovely...

Here we are looking for crystals.... We took the easy option to pick from the floor but some people had brought hammer and chisel and were breaking off the walls ... good work out I suppose.

And these are our treasures....

only kidding these are the rocks you can buy there...

Here are our treasures...watch out luggage allowance as we will be definitely overweight!!!

Happy people after our little expedition

I wanted to see the Walmart museum in Bentonville town centre which happens to be the place where Sam Walton set up his first shop ever... So we decided to head for town and we went to the museum.

This is a great museum with a ton of artefacts about the actual shop, some interactive games (giant google map of the world and you can locate your stores..., comaprison of prices between now and the 60's, replica of the board meeting) and also some great little movies.

I really enjoyed the museum and think it is a great company ... I love retail that is for sure!

Anyway, after the museum Hayden wanted to take his Star Wars person for a walk in my new skates and the wind was strong so Frank and Teo went for a kite....

Hayden and I headed off towards the Crystal Bridges museum which once again has been built by the Waltons... and amazing architecture that looses itself in the surrounding vegetation and just seems like wood lice... very stunning architecture and design...

Check out Star Wars chariot revisited by Hayden

And the walk

I loved that little bird houses structure

It is Teo's birthday today and the Hobbs National State Park was putting on a Celebration Day which is once a year and has many activities and crafts and games to play .. so we decided to go there in the morning and come back at about 4ish to bake the cake for the kids party later that day...

We arrived at the park and there were not that many people but they had a raffle to win some penguin hats and some exclusive 3DVD case of Peter Attenborough series so we entered that one.

They had a lady to show you all the different skins of the animals you can find in the wild...

There was a couple of volunteers who were doing the back pack game, where you needed to decide what is critical to take on a walk. This was good to check whether or not the kids had remembered anything about the Survival Day!

There were a couple of dressed up animals!

There was a show and tell from one ranger to show snakes, turtle, toad and salamander...

There was a craft area where you could make some necklaces out of wood and natural string ... I need to do show that to all the beavers and cubs as this is a cheap but lovely craft to do:

There was also books to read and puzzles to do:

And by the way.. as there were not that many people there we actually won 3 DVD's!!!!

We celebrated a few birthdays these days ....

First we had Kieran

Then Teo & Hayden.

Hayden wanted to have a Star Wars gun party so we built his gun

Uma and Mithra did a really good job to decorate the room!

In the morning of D-Day we gave them their presents:

The kids had a lot of fun with the presents they got given ...

We did the must prinata:

And we had made a chocolate cake and a gateau des rois a la frangipane (that one did not come out that well ... I need to try again):

And that was all for the day....

Following on the beaver lake cruise, we wanted to check out one of the spots they mentioned in the tour which is a tiny dirt road off 303.

The kids and Frank went on a kayak tour on their own (as I have started to read Twilight and could not out my book down!) and saw some great wildlife .. turtles, vultures, big fishes and more birds... we were very proud of the kids in their adult size sea kayak and they sure look the part!...

See for yourselves...