Makeup vs. Mud

Well, last night I got some alone time with my girl, and tonight I got some alone time with my boys.  Felicity is spending the night at Grammy's house, like Logan did last night.  When it was just us girls, there was nail polish, lip gloss, and chocolate.  Those were all Lissy's choices, I should add (well, I DO love chocolate).  I'm a no makeup, no polish, no fuss girl.  My daughter, however, loves all that fuss.  :)  So how did my evening differ when it was just me and my boys?

It started off calmly, with a quiet project as I was EXHAUSTED!  Sleep has been eluding me and I was the type of exhausted where you feel physically sick with a side of restless leg syndrome.  THAT kind of exhausted.  I taught the boys how to harvest my dried lavender and they set in on it. 

Breathing it in.

"Look Mom!"

This is the look he gives me when I say, "Why are you so cute?"

Kian played mostly.  Though he was very capable of harvesting the dried lavender, he's not ready to do a repetitive task like that so he filled bottles with the stalks and dumped them out and harvested a bit and wiggled around and transferred lavender buds from bowl to jar and on and on and on....always moving.  But he had fun.  Logan, did a great job and got quite a good jar full in the end.  His lavender will either go towards a gift from him for Felicity's birthday, or his aunt's birthday.

After a sitting activity, the boys needed to move.  I wasn't tempted to go outside as it was HOT, but I knew we needed to.  So out we went.  I turned on the drip hose for the boys because we have some drip "straws" that empty water into their mud pit for their mud pie kitchen.  Then I crashed on my cushy outdoor chair.  I couldn't help it.  My exhaustion plus the heat got the best of me and I dozed off and on while they splashed.  I opened my eyes once to this muddy boy leaning over me.  :)

Logan decided to see what happens when you put the drip straw into one nostril.

In case you are wondering, multiple things happen.  You can blow great sprays of water out of your nose, or your nose can drip like a fountain, or you can actually suck it carefully in and drink it, in a sense, through your nose.  Who needs a Netti Pot when you have a drip hose?

Of course, baby brother had to be taught.

Both boys were thrilled with this.

There was lots of water play....

.....mud raking....

....mud art created on the porch siding with a stick of kindling...

...and lots of body art and mud sloshing, of course.

After I put Kian to bed, Logan was thrilled to help me water the garden "like an adult."  We do this chore after the kids are in bed usually because that's when the heat breaks.  When we were done, he asked if he could stay up late and help me clean the house "like Daddy does."

ABSOLUTELY!!

So he and I puttered side by side for HOURS.

The play room is now organized and immaculate.

The kitchen is clean.

We tidied up.

And my bathroom got some organizing too.

Cleaning the house is not exactly the plans I'd made for my evening alone with Logan.  I'd planned some lively rounds of Go Fish with some Martineli's Apple Cider (his fav), but I ran with his idea and oddly enough, he LOVED it.  He was thrilled to work beside me in the quite house, just he and I.  He tried so hard to stay awake "like an adult" but when we finally finished up, he passed out here next to me in about 2 minutes flat.

I'll take that as a good sign of an evening well spent one on one, even if it WAS cleaning.