Shovel and Pail

The girls love their shovels and pails. In little-girl-speak "shobel" rings out energetically whenever the urge to dig strikes or somebody mentions the word "park". The local park hosts a playground covered in the girl's favorite medium--pea gravel. Gravel loads onto shovels, into pails, into pockets, into diapers, and into shoes. Eventually, we should have an entire park's worth of gravel transported back to their bedroom.

We visited the sound recently and dutifully brought "shobels" and pails for everybody. Elated at the endless sand they went right to work. Girls get hungry playing in the sand. So hungry that they didn't seem to mind too much if their cheese happened to fall into it every now and then. Remarkable, for girls who cry out "dirty" whenever they discover a speck of dirt on their hands.

Now that it's warmer than when we took these photos, the girls are happily enjoying our local beach and discovering the joys of wet sand. So many different textures to explore, and only one shovel.