It begins

It's here! It came. 

It's not going to last through the week, but it's here for a few days at least. 

People, I'm talking about 80 degrees. It happened. 

We've been outside soaking it up and loving every second of it, which makes for some very dirty kids. Playing outside at our house basically directly translates to playing in the dirt. 

On the evening of the first sunny day, I plopped them all in the tub and we did a good scrub down. I should have taken a photo of the bath water after they got out, then you would really know what I was talking about. You might also want to turn me in to Child Services. Dirt can't hurt, right? 

Then, as soon as we got out to the living room to put on jammies, out the front window what to our wondering eyes did appear, but a cute worker Dad and his... dirt digging... machine. 

That rhymed. 

 Despite just getting the grime off, they were immediately back outside to watch.

 I did constrain them to the rocks, rather than to rolling in the freshly tilled earth like they wanted to.
Harsh, I know.

Our noses were just a quivering with the smell of spring, you should have seen us. We looked like a little flock of bunnies sitting there on the rocks watching him go back and forth with the tiller and turn up the soil.

Emmy: "Mom, I just love the smell of fresh dirt."

 Me: "Me too, Emmy. What do you think it smells like?"
Emmy: "Worms."

Ok.

 Claire was content to sit on my lap. She was getting quite sleepy by this time, as it was nearly 9pm. My camera did a pretty good job of capturing the little bit of light that was left. It was way darker than these photos show!
This is me leaning back as far as the non-muscles in my stomach would let me in order to get a photo of her.

 She would like you to meet Pumba.

 Caleb had been in the garage working on my van for the last 17 hours, so getting outside and breathing some fresh dirt air was needed, despite the late hour. He was so much happier after this! I'm telling you, Gardening is the best therapy - PLUS you get tomatoes!

I eventually sent the minions inside while I helped Caleb finish up. "Helped" meaning lending moral support from my spot on my rock.

 They couldn't stop watching though, despite the directions to go brush their teeth.

But honestly, it wasn't like I could get after them. Who could?!