FOSSICKING FOR PRETTY GEMS...

In the last week or so, Willow has had a book out from the library on precious gems and fossicking.  She has been fascinated by it and has been at her Mum to take her out fossicking for precious gems.
Initially Sarah inquired about the distance from Rocky to Sapphire to see if it was feasible to go out there during their week with us next week, but as it is a four hour drive decided against it.  We thought we might be able to go out to Mt Hay and look for thundereggs.

Whilst we were up on the Sunshine Coast, she read about Fossicking at Opal Down Under at
Glenview on the Sunny Coast.  Everyone was guaranteed to find some pretty rocks to take home.
This sounded like a better option for us and it was free to get in.

 The surroundings here were beautiful.  Lovely lawns, water features, dinosaurs (which really appealed to Max) and some turtle and frog ornaments that the kids had fun climbing all over.
Whilst Sarah and I went inside to enquire about costs, Steve and Max explored the outside.

 Willow was more interested in coming inside with us and checking out all the pretty gems and rocks...  It was fun to see her so excited about our little adventure...

 There were two size containers you could buy to dig for rocks.  One was a smaller one and it was $8 and the larger container was $15.  We decided to get the kids an $8 container each.

They of the children had the best time, although both for different reasons.  The pit was loaded with beautiful coloured and shiny rocks and the hardest part was choosing which ones you wanted to keep.
Willow got right into the fossicking, and collected heaps of pretty rocks.  She was constantly sifting through them to try and work out which were her favourites and which ones she was going to keep as she kept finding so many beautiful rocks.  

Searching in the big rock pit with her Mummy..

Showing us the pretty rocks she was finding..

Which ones will I keep..

They are all so pretty Moppy

They were everywhere in the rock pit...

Finding out about all the different rocks you can find here...

Trying to sort out which ones we like the most...

Sorting her rocks yet again...

Wow look at them all - she was in seventh heaven...

Moppy and Willow digging for the pretty rocks

 Max had a ball also, although he wasn't as keen to search for pretty rocks,  he loved stacking the rocks up with Poppy to make mountains.... He just loved piling them all up...

digging with his Poppy

Look Poppy is this a pretty one...

Willow digging with her Poppy

Building his mountain or rocks...

 Sarah had more fun digging in the sand trays and although the rocks in here were not huge, there were some really beautiful smaller gems in here.

 We had a great morning here.  There was plenty to keep the adults amused as well.  It is not a place we would have gone to on our own, but I am so thankful we did end up taking the kids.  In fact it was hard to tear everyone away when it was time to go home...

Whilst Sarah looked in the shop there, we took the kids out to have a good run around out in the park area.

Willow playing on the turtle..

The it was onto the frog....

Max had a lot of fun just walking along the fence. 

 Whilst we were all outside, Sarah remained inside checking out the shop, and found a few different knick knacks that took her fancy..

 We really did have the best morning here....  Such great memories and am so grateful and thankful that we got to create these memories together...
This was only the start of our day.. After this we were off to checkout out the Maleny Knitfest.  Big long post coming about that one.