Saturday my mom and I took the kids to Clark's Elioak Farm in Ellicott City.  If you live in the area and have never been, you should definitely check it out.  It was a lot of fun!

One weekend a month Mobile Mining Experience comes out and you can buy buckets of enriched ore to sift on their water flumes and search for gems.

They have lots of options to choose from, we did one bucket of gem stones, and one bucket of polished stones.

Everybody loved this activity and now every time I turn around the kids are sorting through their rocks and admiring their finds.

They also got to crack geodes, and Mike was generous enough to let each of the big kids have a turn cracking one, even though we were only buying 3 (enough for each kid to keep half).

Apparently there was once a storybook park in Ellicott City called the Enchanted Forrest and the attractions now reside at Clark's Elioak Farm.  You can read all about it here.  These pictures are of just a few of the many fairy tales represented.

And since this is a farm, I figured I needed to include at least one picture of an animal :) This little sheep and its sibling were only one day old and still a bit wobbly but oh so very tiny and cute!