Sand, water, and sun
The interior of my house has developed a fine coating of sand. Because the sand is so fine, you can’t really see that is there, but you can feel that the surfaces are gritty. I walk around barefoot in my house and the gritty feeling gets to me, so I’ve been sweeping several times per day. The extra sweeping is not a bad thing since my former habit was to sweep far less often than I should have done. All of this sand is transported into my house via the kids who are loving the new sandbox sand. They spent the majority of yesterday and today out digging and castle building. This means that I’ve traded some extra sweeping for hours of peace and quiet. It is a good trade. As Howard said “I’ll take dirty kids over bored ones, any day.”
Mid-afternoon, the kids traded sand for water. Several of them ran inside for swimsuits. It was only after they were all completely soaked that I noticed Patch was not wearing his swimsuit. He was in fact, still in his pajamas. I didn’t see much point in getting two sets of clothing wet, so he frolicked in the pajamas. The backyard neighbor’s hose and our hose were both hooked up to various water squirting appliances and the kids ran back and forth getting wet by various methods. At one point they took turns spraying each other with our adjustable spray nozzle. Mist, six kids draw close to feel the gentle spray. Then with a cackle, the child holding the hose changes the nozzle to “Jet.” Children scatter as they flee from the stream of water. This was repeated over and over. Mist, jet, mist, jet, only occasionally there were ventures into the possibilities of shower, and flat.
When I declared water time to be over because I needed them to dry off, they returned to the sandbox. This dried them off quickly by adhering a layer of sand all over their wet bodies and clothes. Dusting them off to bring them inside was interesting. I made them all have an inside hour before I hauled them off to a picnic dinner with their Tayler cousins. In all, I think the kids only spent a couple of hours inside today. It is only thanks to our shady yard that not one of them burned.
Sand, water, and sun; almost like a day at the beach.