I carry you in my heart...

 I have proof that they were here. This is the art and drawing table.

And here are my two little "zombies" drinking hot chocolate in the morning. Not quite awake yet...

After a hard day Saturday of digging for gold.

Learning to use a pick axe.... the "right" way... with distance between you and your brother and a firm, two handed grip... and lots of supervision.

And little Bean, who liked just sitting and looking for gold veins in the rock.

Then, we let them start their own hard rock mining project.
Hey, it's free labor. They wanted to do it. Really!

They are digging a tunnel. It may take a while. If they do a good job, we will have our "wine cellar" in a few years. They competed to see who could dig the deepest. Our eight year old Bean won. He was ahead by a nose (That's about an inch and a half.). He measured it with his nose. He's older and very competitive.

They worked hard... no salary... but there were benefits.
They got to pan some concentrates and actually found some gold. What excitement. Papa gave them their own little container for THEIR gold. We want them to carry on the tradition. This is why it's called "Gold Fever". We are starting them young. Future gold hunter's in training.

Well, we do live in "gold" country. Our dirt is lode bearing. We have a real gold mine on our property which we closed up because it was unsafe... but it produced a lot of gold before WWII.

The other benefit was a ride in Papa's wagon attached to the "three wheeler". Papa took them up, up, up into the hills on a dirt road and down to the main road and back up again.
 I told them it was better than Disneyland because it was free and you didn't have to stand in line. "Better than Disneyland" might have been a stretch, but they loved the ride.

 Coming up from the main road...

 They couldn't wait to start digging again. Really! They caught the "fever". They are definitely our grandchildren. When I went out to say it was time to eat... their dad was panning, the boys were digging and our oldest was riding around on the 3 wheeler. All having a good time.

So, later, we cleaned them up before bed.

Let them do more artwork and mug for Noni's camera without picking their nose.

"Hey", Noni said, "No fingers up the nose."

Then The Bean started teasing me. Every time I would go to take a picture of him, he would pretend to pick his nose. Rascal!! I threatened him with a haircut and he stopped.
Little Bean was still in the bath getting scrubbed by his mom. He fell asleep shortly after the bath.
The black smudge on the Bean's face is from his Saturday morning baseball game. He didn't want to wash it off so we washed around it on both cheeks. I thought they only did that on football players, but what do I know.


They're gone now. I miss them. Why are the Prospector and I so tired?
They were saying that they couldn't make it up here again next weekend, on Mother's Day.
 I said... it's OK. This was the best Mother's Day they could have given me.
Oh, there was one other time.  It was May 12, 1968.  I brought our first child home from the hospital on Mother's Day. That was a day to remember and the first Mother's day for me.

So, I will enjoy Mother's Day with my memories of this weekend. It was a great weekend and I was reminded of an old poem  that e.e.cummings wrote. It was about one person, but I like to spread it further, to my whole family. It's a long poem but the ending goes;
"...here is the deepest secret nobody knows
(here is the root of the root and the bud of the bud
and the sky of the sky of a tree called life;which grows
higher than the soul can hope or mind can hide)
and this is the wonder that's keeping the stars apart
i carry your heart [s]
(i carry it [them] in my heart)"

Find the whole poem here:

(Oh... and my daughter in law and I snuck away from the guys for a few hours and drove into Sutter Creek and went SHOPPING. Girls gotta have their fun too. )