Sandbox!
3 February 2014 - With Mom out of town for a long weekend, it was time for Dad to remind the kids why he's the fun parent. Mom and I had been talking about a sandbox for a week or so, and while she was so far against it, she had the beach growing up and I had a sandbox, so I decided the easiest way was to just do it, forgiveness being better than permission and all that.
Friday afternoon (I took them out of school right after Hannah's spelling test, before lunch) the kids and I went to Home Depot to pick up sand. 60lbs 'General Purpose' sand is 5 cents cheaper than 50lbs 'Play' sand. Well, that's a no brainer, I'm not much for marketing, so I grabbed 5 bags. In the check-out line, I noticed a warning label ... that's weird, it's just sand - what could it possibly say? "Keep out of reach of children" ... "Contains silica, do not breathe" ... crap. Five minutes later, we're back in line with 6 bags of Play sand and $24 later, we're on the road.
You may recognize the box - especially in the video below; yes, that was my raspberries. I gave them 4 years to produce & one year I actually got 3 berries (but not last year, last year nothing). Three berries in 4 years from 3 bushes. And they were small berries. Enough is enough, the bushes are now 2 bundles to be used as a fire starter next fall and the very expensive soil I planted them in is now spread out in my yard.
Pulling the thorny bushes (thanks Dave for the heavy leather gloves you gave me over 12 years ago!), weeds and dirt out of the box was a little more work than I anticipated. We started at 4pm and at about 30 minutes before dark we were not yet finished (keep in mind it's January, so dark was fairly early). The girls were getting hungry and wanted to call it a night, but I bribed them to push forward (at that point, it was just getting all the dirt out). Normally Saturday morning is breakfast, then chores, but I said that if we finished, they could play in it after breakfast before chores (that, and I made a lemon-lime-aid as a treat to drink 'at the beach'). It was in the mid-upper 60's all day Friday, so this sounded like a good idea at the time. Unfortunately, it was 40 Saturday morning and never went over 44. Sunday morning was 30. The brand-new sandbox remains untouched (other than posing for pics Friday night - Adam was eating dinner, so he hasn't seen it finished yet). Sigh.
I inverted a lid on a large bucket in the back yard and put about 10lbs of sand in it for Adam to play with while the three of us worked. He would poke it with the toys I gave him to play with in it, but refused to touch the sand itself. When I picked some up and poured it on his had, you'd think it was acid, he pulled away so fast & immediately started wiping off his hands! After many, many minutes of coaxing, eventually he touched the sand on his own & by the time I filmed the below video, he had been playing in it for a little while, all fear removed.
Mom has since come home and while she never exactly signed off on the sandbox, I explained that I spent my own spending money on it and told her about Adam's initial reaction to the sand. She has a family trip to the beach planned for this summer, so I explained that I hadn't so much gone behind her back to make a sandbox as much as I had saved her trip - that thanks to me, he'll now have a fun time at the beach. At least that's my story and I'm sticking to it.
Friday afternoon (I took them out of school right after Hannah's spelling test, before lunch) the kids and I went to Home Depot to pick up sand. 60lbs 'General Purpose' sand is 5 cents cheaper than 50lbs 'Play' sand. Well, that's a no brainer, I'm not much for marketing, so I grabbed 5 bags. In the check-out line, I noticed a warning label ... that's weird, it's just sand - what could it possibly say? "Keep out of reach of children" ... "Contains silica, do not breathe" ... crap. Five minutes later, we're back in line with 6 bags of Play sand and $24 later, we're on the road.
You may recognize the box - especially in the video below; yes, that was my raspberries. I gave them 4 years to produce & one year I actually got 3 berries (but not last year, last year nothing). Three berries in 4 years from 3 bushes. And they were small berries. Enough is enough, the bushes are now 2 bundles to be used as a fire starter next fall and the very expensive soil I planted them in is now spread out in my yard.
Pulling the thorny bushes (thanks Dave for the heavy leather gloves you gave me over 12 years ago!), weeds and dirt out of the box was a little more work than I anticipated. We started at 4pm and at about 30 minutes before dark we were not yet finished (keep in mind it's January, so dark was fairly early). The girls were getting hungry and wanted to call it a night, but I bribed them to push forward (at that point, it was just getting all the dirt out). Normally Saturday morning is breakfast, then chores, but I said that if we finished, they could play in it after breakfast before chores (that, and I made a lemon-lime-aid as a treat to drink 'at the beach'). It was in the mid-upper 60's all day Friday, so this sounded like a good idea at the time. Unfortunately, it was 40 Saturday morning and never went over 44. Sunday morning was 30. The brand-new sandbox remains untouched (other than posing for pics Friday night - Adam was eating dinner, so he hasn't seen it finished yet). Sigh.
I inverted a lid on a large bucket in the back yard and put about 10lbs of sand in it for Adam to play with while the three of us worked. He would poke it with the toys I gave him to play with in it, but refused to touch the sand itself. When I picked some up and poured it on his had, you'd think it was acid, he pulled away so fast & immediately started wiping off his hands! After many, many minutes of coaxing, eventually he touched the sand on his own & by the time I filmed the below video, he had been playing in it for a little while, all fear removed.
Mom has since come home and while she never exactly signed off on the sandbox, I explained that I spent my own spending money on it and told her about Adam's initial reaction to the sand. She has a family trip to the beach planned for this summer, so I explained that I hadn't so much gone behind her back to make a sandbox as much as I had saved her trip - that thanks to me, he'll now have a fun time at the beach. At least that's my story and I'm sticking to it.
More pictures when it warms up - this is Texas, so no telling when that'll happen!