Messy Fun!

I recently told a mom friend how much fun kids can have if you can just let go and let them make a mess (thinking about the time Nathan made such a huge mess with the flour in NC, which was YEARS ago - back when Sarah was a few months old in her jumper). Well, I decided to take my own advice this week and let the kids play with the shredder scraps after helping with a big round of shredding.  It started out this big, grew much bigger, they added cars, then clothing became optional and by the end both were down to their undies.  First shirts started to come off because scraps of paper were going down their backs, then Nathan told me he was getting too hot and needed to take his jeans off too.  And, of course, Sarah followed her brother's example exactly, even coming up to me to tell me "Me too hot pants!"

The kids also got some good sweeping practice in - both in sweeping up piles of paper that were thrown in the air and then helping me clean up the mess.  Nathan is actually a pretty competent sweeper these days, though Sarah needs to work on her technique before she's actually helpful. 

Because this is just how I am, I decided to time us cleaning up the mess - seven minutes!  So I need to remember that an hour plus of fun making messes is totally worth the minimal amount of time it takes us to clean up.