Making life fun

After lunch we have an hour of quite time here. The kids can either read, write a story/letter/journal or take a nap. Something in their rooms that is a quiet activity. Typically the youngest 2 take a nap.

When the quiet hour was over the twins wanted to do something but had to stay quiet so the other 2 could sleep. So.. I sent them outside to play. They were looking for bugs, snails, ladybugs etc... and playing with the few items in the yard they could find to entertain themselves. At one point I checked up on them and they were playing with an ant pile. I had a bad encounter with a pile of ants as a child and I didn't want them to repeat my experience so I decided they needed to be distracted with something else. I told them that they could yank out anything they wanted in the backyard. There were lots of long grasses at the fenceline.. I was hoping they would take them out for me. ;-p

My son turned to me with his eyes wide with excitement and asked if he could take out the trees. (We have 3 dead trees in the yard that do need to be removed).... so I said "sure". Both kids started bouncing up and down screaming "we get to take out the trees!!!". In a VERY short amount of time I heard new yelling... "We did it!!! We took out the tree!!!". I went out to find that, sure enough, they had removed one of the tres, roots and all. They just kept pushing and pulling until it came loose.

Onward and forward to tree #2. Yanked that one in no time. This one broke off at the ground. I'm thrilled because I was dreading having to do this task. Tree #3 was going to be a bit more difficult. It was larger and actually had grow a bit since it was planted. The twins and I took it down with a bit of coaxing. WOW... 3 dead trees down in less than 1/2 hour!
By this time the younger kids were awake and we all went outside to trim bushes, pull weeds and crabgrass.

We have 2 bushes out front that my daughter asked what they were. I said I had no clue. She decided that they needed names. We decided on Bob and Larry. The short round one looked like Bob and the taller one looked like Larry:



So now we're naming our plants. What fun.

Next, I was doing some serious trimming of everything and creating quite a pile of yard waste. We had filled the yard waste recycle can and now needed everything to be put in a pile in the backyard until we could fit it in the can. As the kids picked up each armload they pretended it was money. They started sounding like Mr. Crabs from Spongebob. 3 kids yelling "money" and grabbing an armload of weeds and plant clippings until the job was done. NEVER one complaint about having to work. This was not work to them.. this was FUN. They would have continued on if I had more steam.

I loved their perspectives. They realized that we were making the yard pretty for everyone (not just mom and dad). They got excited to see the huge pile we had all made together. I have been blessed with these amazing kids.