Best Dad Ever

John told me he wanted to relax today, to take it easy before our trip to North Carolina for Amanda's wedding. Sylvie and I had a bunch of errands to run before the trip, so John decided to run to Home Depot to take a look at wood for a future sand box project. A big tree was removed from our yard before we moved in last year and in its place is a huge dirt mound. I'm sure I've posted pics of Sylvie digging in this dirt mound on the Daily Syl before. She loves it, and gets so much joy from it. And we've been pretty okay with her playing in it as much as she wants, but lately we've been realizing just how dirty it is, you know, playing and digging in a mound of dirt and all. Her clothes have been so filthy and her nightly baths are no match for the dirt and grime under her fingernails. We had one of those aha! parenting moments when we realized there's a reason you never hear of people having "dirt boxes" in their yards. So we decided that our spring project would be to build a sand box for Sylvie.

John's scouting trip to Home Depot turned into a full blown back breaking day of sand box labor. And like all home improvement projects, he did run into a few dead ends. For starters, let me be the first to suggest that anyone wanting to dig a plot of land for a sand box NOT try to accomplish that digging where a big tree once stood. Because trees? Have big huge stumps and crazy roots under the dirt, even if you can't see them. John started digging and realized this pretty quickly. He thought he could try hacking up the roots and stump, but quickly decided to switch locations. This meant digging up a second 4ft square in our already small yard. And this also meant that our main goal of covering up the big dirt mound would go unmet. But that's where I came in and offered a solution - we would carefully dig up the dirt and grass from the second plot and salvage it, creating our own sod pieces to cover up the former dirt mound. And by god, it worked! This is why John and I are such a solid team, people!

Here he is after digging up the second plot. The sand box frame is 12 inches deep, so he wanted to dig a hole at least 8-10 inches into the ground.

The sand box frame is in place, and he has lined the bottom with landscaping fabric, to allow water to seep through but keep the dirt out!

John's sweet inscription, which has since been covered with sand.

Filling the sand box with bags of play sand. (22 50lb bags to be exact!)

Sylvie wakes up from her nap to find her new sand box. Her first words were "I build a castle?"

Here she is playing, although at this point it's only half way filled with sand. We had to make a couple of car trips to buy it all, since we needed so much.

We also still need to sand the edges down, make some triangle seats for the corners, and make a cover out of lattice (to keep cats and other animals out, but allow rain in, as per Bob Villa. Thanks, Bob!) Also this picture was taken before John filled in the gaps around the edges with dirt. He also wants to plant some viny shrubs around the edges to fill it in a little better. It's a work in progress, but Sylvie is pleased as punch. What a great dad.

We can't wait to have some friends over to play!!