A few weeks ago, actually, we decided to pretty up our entryway. The kids got so excited when I arrived at the front door with a bunch of flowers and a couple bags of dirt. Oh boy, dirt! So I made a big pile of dirt on the sidewalk, and asked if they could help by putting some dirt into the flower pots I lined up. David didn't really fill any of the pots up. But he took his little gardening shovel and scooped up a lot of dirt. And threw it in the air. I think he's going to be a astrophysicist, I mean, the way he's already studying gravity and aerodynamics. And maybe chaos theory. But he did carry his trusty broom around with him, and did a good job of clearing the edges of our little gardening adventure.

Isabelle was a big help though, as long as the help meant putting dirt into pots. She would have been happy to do that all afternoon. She even started to dump out the pots, telling me that she needed to do that one over again to get the right level of dirt in it. Every now and then, I pulled a pot about half full of dirt from the filling/dumping station, and planted a flower. Eventually, I got them all planted. "But Dad," her little voice would say, "we need more dirt in this pile over here on the sidewalk for me to put into the pots today."

But I had lots more fun in store, for it was then time to water! "Dad! Can I hold the pitcher?"

"Of course, dear." And she did. She was a very good waterer. She poured it out very slowly and cautiously, so as not to send the newly planted flower on its side or out of the pot. When reminded, she concentrated on not pouring water right onto the flower, but instead onto the dirt at the base of the flowers. When we were all done, she naturally want to water all of the plants again! However, we were able to conserve water, and only use just enough. After looking at the lovely flowers all in pots around the front of our house, she looked up with a big smile and wanted to know when we could do that again.

Probably pretty soon, as we have a few snails that also liked our arrangement.