Irene, Doug's mom, and I had a fun adventure yesterday. We took Lila to the park near our house in the afternoon and while we were walking to the playground, we saw an interesting rock sticking out of the ground. It had a vein of pretty blue in it. Irene is a real rock nut and I kind of like them myself, so we stopped to pick it up.

Turned out it was too big to just pick up, so we started trying to dig it out of the ground. All we had to work with was a stick and a smaller rock, so we weren't able to get it out of the ground. (i did manage to get half a dozen ant bites on my knee while trying though.) We gave up and went on with our playground fun.

On our way home from dinner yesterday evening, we made Doug stop by the park so that we could try again. This time I'd brought a spade along to help dig. We still weren't able to get it up though because we could only spend a few minutes trying. Doug was in the car with Lila - she was tired and hungry and he was just tired. So we gave up again and went home.

After Lila was in bed, I went back out to the park with a flashlight, the spade, and some water to loosen up the dirt around the rock. It took me 5-10 minutes, but I *finally* got the thing out of the ground! I filled the hole back in and brought my prize home. Hail the conquering hero!!! :o)~

Irene and I scrubbed most of the mud off of it last night and it is, indeed, an interesting rock. It has been soaking overnight in a bucket of soapy water and I'm going to finish cleaning it up later. I'm excited to see it all clean and in the daylight. I will have to give it a place of prominence somewhere!