spinach is good

Last night was perfect.  Byron and Karen came down for one of B's cousins weddings, so we had a little more help with the kids during the day.  Yesterday I mowed the lawn while B trimmed (and Grady walked around for probably 30 minutes raking the grass with his little yellow rake - not sure what he thought he was accomplishing, but he thought he was helping and he was working hard and so it made me happy), got in the corn down at the community garden, finally planted my impatients in the front, got in some bush beans - cause you can never have enough, and even did a little inside and made us all a healthy lunch.  Days where that much is accomplished need to be documented!  Remember when I could get that much done in a few hours?  Times have changed..... anyway, last night B went to the wedding with his mom and dad and me and the kids decided we needed to harvest some spinach.  We cleaned out a big bucket and picked and picked - Leah fell asleep in my sling, and even Graham was being a good little picker.  We filled up the bucket with water and then set up an assembly line - Graham would reach in and grab out a handful of leaves and put them in the bowl of water that Clara had.  She would rinse them again then pull of the stems and hand them to Grady.  Grady was manning the salad spinner and after a couple spins in that he would dump them out on the big towel we had spread out on the grass.  I had a cutting board and knife and got it all chopped up and into bags.  We worked hard and in an hours time had three big bags of spinach, cleaned and ready to go.  This sounds mundane.  But it was one of the happiest nights I think I've ever had.  The sun was warm and perfect shining down on us, there was a little breeze but not too much to blow our leaves away - the air smelled like the newly cut grass we were sitting on and my kids were happy to be helping me. (!!)  It was perfect.