Getting Dirty

I have been in a funk the past couple of days. Not sure what my problem was. Didn't like it. Bad attitude. Mean Mommy. Nasty wife. Pouty friend. Sad face. Boo. I feel better now, thanks to a little dirt digging, worm finding, weed pulling, dirty dirty dirty fun with 3 of my favorite boys and a few neighbors thrown in for good measure. My brother stopped by yesterday and the boys and I were outside playing. Ben was playing basketball at the neighbors house and I was watching Joe run around like a maniac. Because I find it impossible to sit still, I started pulling weeds from the area in front of the house where we just removed seven humongous and horribly ugly bushes. I have to clean up the area before I can plant some new beautiful goodies so that is what I started doing. The next thing you know I had tons of helpers as my brother dug in, Joey plopped happily right down into the dirt, Ben grabbed a shovel and the two neighbor kids plus another friend they had over started raking, digging, and "helping." It was actually great fun and we even managed to get some work done. The weather was perfect, the conversation was entertaining, and the drama was minimal (we had one small sharing issue with the "cool" shovel that resulted in Ben spending some time indoors to decompress...plus he had to poop he said so it worked out well! and there was an unfortunate episode involving Ben running inside to get something and forgetting to take off his shoes, resulting in a brief shift of focus from gardening to carpet cleaning). I wish I had taken a picture of Joe before I threw his dirty bum in the bathtub. He was covered head to toe in dirt, seriously the only non dirt covered part of him was the piece of skin between his nose and mouth and the only reason that was "clean" was thanks to a constant trail of snot that ran from his nose and washed away the dirt. Joe was happy as can be. He loved making friends with rocks, worms, and dirt in general. His joy was infectious and we were all enjoying making friends and working hard. It was a great way to end the day and I hope to get dirty again with my boys real soon...but this time I hope to be planting some pretties at the same time!