saturday in the sandbox

The best part about the following email from my father-in-law is that it arrived while I was still in bed.

To: Andrew, Nico, Heather
From: Dad
Subject: Finn Does More Before 8 AM Than Most People Do All Day
Time: Saturday, July 24, 8:33 AM

Finn was up at about 5:45 AM today, in a great mood. I had to make a run to the grocery store and by the time I got back Mimi had made oatmeal for us for breakfast. I left the house a few minutes after 7 (while Mimi was getting Finn dressed) and made a quick run to Porter’s. Finn has a copy of the weight ticket to show Mama and Dada that his sand box now has one ton of sand, as measured by the scales at the pit. When I was getting the truck weighed Ralph asked me what I was doing – told him sand for a 2 year old grandson and he said he was glad that I was doing something important this morning. Got home and Mimi had Finn on the deck to watch the sand being dumped into the sand box. Just about then Dale the State Line garbage truck driver came along – so Finn had to go say hi to him and ‘give him 5’ – and watch the BIG garbage truck drive off. I had turned the truck off and Finn helped work the dump lever to make the bed go down – he seemed to like that OK. I watched Finn for a bit and broke a rule, I know – I had to move the dump truck back to the barn so Finn just sat next to me and we did not go over a couple miles an hour. Then we came back and I leveled the sand out a little – Finn liked watching Papa work the scoop shovel. By then Mimi was out with his bucket and tools, hat, sunscreen, etc. So here are pictures of Finn enjoying the sandbox before 8 AM this morning. He has since added the yellow plastic loader, truck, dozer, etc. We will work up to the larger Tonka stuff. But he appears to be enjoying it so far and they are still out there.