Josh the Shovel

We went for our usual Saturday morning trip to the little farmers' market here in town this weekend. The farmers and products are starting to get few and far between now that the days are getting cooler and wetter. We didn't find anything to buy, so we kept on going til we got to the park.

Man, the boys love the park. It's an old Kinsmen-built park that reminds me of the Kinsmen park in the small Saskatchewan town where I grew up. The same steel swings, teeter-totters and tall slides. Even the old merry-go-round.

There is a swing set with three steel horses. These are obviously for the little ones, but the horses are over 3 feet from the ground. Kinda scary, but Josh loved it. "Yee-Ha! Cowboy! Yee-Ha! Cowboy!"

Well, we had been there close to an hour and we were on our way out. The boys were playing on the one modern play structure with a variety of slides and tubes in a sandy gravel pit. I helped Daniel slide down one of the tubes on his tummy and he flipped over and came out feet first. Of course, Joshie has to do everything his brother does.

The thing is that Josh always slides way faster than Daniel. He doesn't plant his shoes on the sides for brakes like his bigger brother. I put him in on his tummy and ran around to catch him at the bottom. He flew down like a torpedo and dove out face first into the sand. I picked him up and wiped him off. The guy wasn't even crying. Then he started spitting and wiping his tongue. His mouth and nose were full of sand. He had hit the dirt and plowed a good sized furrough.

We got him mostly cleaned out and headed back towards home to get him some juice to rinse his mouth and I heard a grinding and crunching. He was chewing on the last bit of sand in his mouth to get it out of his teeth. But still not even a hint of crying. He really would make a great yee-ha cowboy.