DeSoto Caverns (Part II)

After we rode the train, our next activity at DeSoto Caverns was to pan for gemstones.   To my great surprise, Henry especially REALLY enjoyed panning for gemstones.  And he was very good at it!

{Just in case you’re interested, you can find hats like Henry’s hat on Totsy (a site similar to Zulily) for another day or two.  If you need an invite to Totsy (or Zulily), just shoot me your e-mail and I’ll send you one.}

Piper and Rosemary enjoyed panning for gemstones, too.

But I don’t think they could possibly have enjoyed it as much as Henry!

The kids loved having the little baggies of their gemstones and they insisted on holding them for the hour-long drive home.  When we got home, Gary took the kids upstairs to bathe them then we got them settled in for naps. 

Then Piper – who I refer to as a teenager due to her love of sleep – called for me to go upstairs.  When I got up there, she told me that her tummy hurt.  I gave her some gas medicine.  About 15 minutes later, the same thing happened again.  I gave her some gas medicine again and told her that if she couldn’t go to sleep to call for me again and I’d come get her.  Well, she finally slept.  But when I got downstairs again, Gary told me that when he got the kids out of their carseats that Piper didn’t have all of her gemstones.

Uh-oh.

I went out to the car and found several gemstones that had been dropped, but there was just no way to be sure that we had all the ones we found panning.  When Piper got up from her nap, she started talking again about how much her tummy hurt.  The problem is that Piper will answer almost any question in the affirmative.  I tried to lead her into telling me whether she’d eaten the gemstones, but she didn’t fall for any of my questions.  I finally had to flat out ask her if she ate any of the “rocks” and, as I had fully expected, she said yes.

So at about 7:00 p.m. on Saturday night, Piper and Gary took a trip to the Children’s ER.  She had an x-ray, but the doctors told us that the gemstones wouldn’t show up on the x-ray unless they were all glass.  What?!!  I still don’t understand how that works, but we weren’t able to get any confirmation of whether she actually ate any of the gemstones.  We did learn that the biggest risk (based on the size and shape of the potentially eaten gemstones) is that they are stuck on the way into her tummy.  The doctors eventually determined that the gemstones, if indeed any were eaten, had made their way to her tummy and would make their way out eventually.

Gary was home with Piper (and her requested dinner of fries and chicken) by 10:00 p.m.  The poor child was almost drunk from lack of sleep (in full “I love you” stage) and covered with bribery stickers.  I couldn’t stop laughing when she walked in and just fell into my arms to hug me and say “Maaaaamaaaaaa” as if she hadn’t seen me in days.  Piper certainly had a great time that night.

In the end, despite not making it through the cave tour, the busted lip, and the trip to the ER, we still had a really good time on Saturday.  Just a day in the life, right?