After a rough morning of boy brawls and all out uncontrolled chaos in our little home, I decided that a trip to the park was warranted. Of course, in order to make that happen I would have to get dressed without them killing each other in my short absence. Luckily, we all survived relatively unscathed. We headed off to a little park that we don't often visit, but is relatively close by. After the boys played on the equipment and with a few other kids for a while we decided to put our shoes back on (shoes were absolutely optional on such a beautiful spring morning) and explore. This park has an abundance of trees surrounding open fields and a good sized pond, which happened to be nearly dry on this trip. X-man was determined to find us some frogs, so off to the dwindling pond we marched. We stood on the cracked, dehydrated pond bed discussing how it got that way and Gokey suddenly decided to heave the stick he had harvested on the way there into the water. His mistake...running toward the water's edge to get close enough to do said heaving. Since the pond was a mere shadow of what it once was, the ground was very dry farther out, but nearing the water's edge it turned into the thick, gooey sludge that, if you have have ever been brave enough to stick your toes into the bottom of such a pond, you know there's a chance you may never see them again! Before I could even yell his name he had planted both "fast shoe" covered little feet in the grime and as I reached for him he fell forward and both hands disappeared as well. I literally had to pull him up by the belt loop on his tiny shorts and this is what we had:
They certainly have a way of keeping me on my toes...and elbow deep in dirt! :)