Life is a Sandbox

...or at least the sandbox is the best part when you're four and a half. As another blogger says in his blog: Play hard, have fun, share, and look out for the crap... Last weekend I managed to finish up Isabelle's sandbox. We went out on Sunday and got the sand at Lowe's and put the thing in the backyard. Isabelle was tickled pink. Here she is sizing it up before we put the sand in. As soon as the sand went in she was all over it. The six bags I got did just the trick. It covered the bottom with about six inches of clean play sand.

She must have played in it for four hours on Sunday and was in it again today. So far she's managed to keep the sand in the box for the most part but it will be interesting to see how contaminated it gets with all the other stuff in the backyard. This is a shot of the cover. It's bowed to keep the water off of it. It should hold a four year old but I tried to explain to Isabelle that dancing on it was not the best thing for it. We'll see what happens. (I did see footprints on it today when I went out to have a look.) Below is the tie down to keep the lid on in the wind. The rest of the weekend went pretty well. Saturday was the last of five days of rain so we hit a few places in town including The Open Book and the main branch of the Greenville County Library downtown on Heritage Green. We met some friends there and ended up going back to their place for an hour or so so Isabelle could play with the twins. All in all it was a good day. On Sunday Isabelle was fairly self-entertained with the above mentioned sandbox so Jane took in some quiet time and I puttered in the garage. I have signed up for the East Coast Canoe and Kayak Festival in Charleston in a few weeks and needed to sort out my kayaking gear. The festival looks like a great time with courses, camping, southern cooking, and lots of dealers and demos. There will also be some big names form the sea kayaking community there taking part and coaching. In January when I went on the paddling trip to Charleston I managed to tear a small hole in my (practically) brand new paddling jacket so I put in a little time trying to fix it. Tonight, if I have time, I'm going to finish sewing on the patch. I also have to replace the cuffs on my dry top. They have developed little tears after six or seven years of use. I've been meaning to do it for a while but never had the time. Wish me luck.