Wednesday morning, we skipped school and work, packed up the car and headed to the North Carolina mountains. My parents-in-law live up there and wanted to visit a new gem mine store that recently opened in Brevard, NC. Brevard is a sweet little mountain town full of quaint restaurants, gift stores, and toy stores. It was a gorgeous day… I think the temperature was in the 60s! We kept asking ourselves if it really was still July. One we arrived, the owners of Crystal Mountain Gem Mine brought in buckets of sand, rocks and hidden gems from their various mining spots in the region. They have a 52-foot long indoor water flume that runs along the length of the store that water streams through. All we had to do was sit right down and start sifting through the muck and mire to find the rocks and gems. 
Grace, my 11 year old daughter, was thrilled. She had a blast finding big chunks of colorful gems and rocks with her Nana by her side. Corban, my 5 year old son, sat in Daddy’s lap and they had fun scooping and sorting together. Emily, my 15 year old daughter, had fun too… shopping! So, it was a win-win for them all and no boots required!
When we were all done sifting through our buckets, a nice young man named Chris, looked over all our treasures and to our amazement he found 2 rubies in our pile!! If we get them cut and polished they could be worth over $1000! He said it was very rare to find such gems in their buckets so we were pretty jazzed! After that, we headed to a super cool toy store where the boys had fun with the race track. We walked down the street to a local diner where we enjoyed a wonderful lunch in Brevard. We were sad to have to get home but we were so thankful to take a morning out of our busy schedules to enjoy a gorgeous day with family!
