Worms & Dirt & Kids...a great combination!

I think this is my most favorite photo of Caitlin. Yesterday I spent hours outside digging up my large flowerbed. Every time I found a big worm, (and these two were the biggest) I showed them to Caitlin. She just wanted to carry them around. She was very careful not to squeeze them. I asked her if I could take a picture of the worms and she happily agreed. The look on her face is priceless to me. She's very much like I was, well, and still am....fascinated by all creatures. :)

I forgot to post this photo last time. The kids were all having a mid-day meal of cereal at Grandma's house....if ran for the camera, since, well, they're all sitting still next to each other...that's rare! You can see the milk running down Caitlin's chin!

This is the large flowerbed in progress. Our neighbor that lives behind the fence has been doing lots of yard work..with big machines and such...and he had some extra dirt I could have. He just dumped it over the fence and it sat in a pile for a couple weeks. The kids decided to dig a hole to China...or at least tried. Yesterday was a beautiful day and I was tired of looking at the hole! So armed with only a shovel, I broke it all up, filled in the hole and kept Caitlin busy with worms. To say the least, I am very sore today, my middle back muscles and my arms...it's almost tough to work on any spinning today...but I must!

And here's the flowerbed almost finished. I had tons of stones laying around...they all came from my grandparent's property....I used the flat stones in the middle for a walkway and the rounder and odd-shaped stones for the edging. The lower bed is about 4-5 inches higher than ground level and the back bed is at least a foot higher. I need to put some sort of edging behind the walkway stones to prevent the dirt from collapsing....my husband will figure that out tonight. I also need to move all the little stones I have leftover...probably they'll go behind the garage...which will eventually be covered with more dirt. The only plant growing back there are double orange tiger lilies. Very pretty. I'll be sharing those with my neighbor and my mom. You can see on the left of the bed my huge lilac. I trimmed the old seed pods off a few weeks ago and what a difference that made. There will be MANY blooms in just a couple weeks.