"Mud Bath"

The other day the boys & I painted some of our old terra cotta pots, opened up a new bag of potting soil and finally planted some of the plants that we won at Sawyer's school auction a couple weekends ago. Sawyer chose the mixed lettuces for his pot, and Sutton opted for the herbs. I figured that we already have herbs and lettuce in our big raised garden beds, so it doesn't matter if these do well or get stunted by growing in small containers...as long as the boys have their OWN mini garden to attend to, all is well and right in their little world.


They are insanely proud of their plants, and Sutton couldn't wait to give his herbs their first watering.

LITTLE DID WE KNOW...


Sawyer was busy on the other side of the yard taking care of some watering of his own - filling up our remaining (and still currently empty, thank goodness!) raised bed with a lake of hose water.

Sawyer suggested that they put on their swim trunks since there was a lot of water, and since boys will be boys, I couldn't bring myself to refuse their request of making mud pies out of the sloppy mess. It was MY fault, after all, for breaking out the dirt and the plants in the first place. It all started out so innocently...

BUT I SHOULD HAVE KNOWN BETTER...

Boys will be boys, right? Nothing goes hand-in-hand with boyness as much as dirtiness!

Pretty soon it morphed into mud body painting...

Which quickly turned into a major mud fight...which translated to Mommy cleaning mud out of deep inside of their ears for DAYS!

Time for a little clean-up!

I SO wish I could claim that this actually worked and made for some easier clean up for me, but honestly, the sprinkler only took off the first miniscule layer of muck and grime. We had to follow this up with a marathon bathtime and a scrubbing that probably took off the top layer of their skin in addition to the funk...hey, it WAS a 50/50 compost and manure blend they were playing in - ICK!

Naturally, they've been begging to take a "mud bath" every day now ♥