What kind of ‘treasure’ adventures have you been on? Maybe your ‘treasure’ hunting involves finding the house or car of your dreams. Maybe it means going antiquing and finding something with a fine patina that you didn’t know you needed until you saw it. Perhaps your ‘treasure’ fits the bill of time with family and loved ones (you’re probably a woman if you say your ‘treasure’ includes people, bahaha! OR you are a really cool guy!). Well, if you are a young boy ‘treasure’ includes those things that really ARE considered treasure - gold, diamonds, gems. My two boys, Adam 10 and Brett 6, are two of those young boys who think these treasures are pretty neat.

This is how our Family Adventure Treasure Tales began . . .

Using the boys’ natural interests in treasures helped guide our 'homeschooling' lessons the past few months and we learned a lot about gold - where it is geographically and geologically found, the 'rich' history of gold mining, the properties it possesses, and the monetary value of gold . . . my boys seem to be very motivated by anything that they can earn some mad money from, lol.

After taking a few weeks to study these gold-focused lessons in math, science, social studies, and reading, the next topic that came up was, "Mom, can we actually go panning for gold?" Naturally, my hesitation was strong since it didn't take long to find out that the local supply of gold in Wisconsin wasn't robust enough to buy a cheap cup of coffee. Regardless, I bought a pretty inexpensive gold panning kit from Amazon, and in a few days, we tried our luck on a local river.

The funny (and later disappointing) part, was almost immediately we found some sparkles in that fine river sand. We tried not to get our hopes too high, and although I am classically an optimist, I didn't want any misplaced positivity to lead to a big let down when the 'treasure' turned folly. And, as the case was, the local 'gold' indeed wasn't true gold. And while they were disappointed, they weren’t completely surprised either.

Strike.

So back we went to the original question about panning for gold, but now, the expectations were raised knowing that locally we weren't going to get the results we wanted. . . "Mom, can we go to Montana to pan for gold?"

Welp.

A ‘little’ trip to Montana isn’t always quite so simple, especially to pan for gold and to seek treasure, but in a beautiful twist of fate, a trip out west actually was in our future . . .

Stay tuned to this blog and to my podcast Healthy Mom Crazy Life for more on our Family Adventure Treasure Tales that did indeed lead us to treasure, danger, & endless memories...!

With Love,

Brianne <3