Dinner time. We're all sitting at the table..some clean, some stinky, all hungry after a full day of school and cross country practices all around. Waiting. waiting. waiting. WHERE ON EARTH IS SAM?! (we have family dinners and everyone's gotta be there...) we kept waiting..called his name..looked in the back..looked in the bathrooms and bathtubs...looked by the legos..looked under beds in case he was hiding out..looked outside, first the front yard and then the back. There he was: happy as could be, industriously digging in the dirt at dusk. I called him in and he came to the door, looking like a muddy ragamuffin, grinning like a champ. He then went, washed his hands in the sink and came sit at the table, proudly announcing to the family that he was digging a hole to plant a tree. "Well what kind of tree, Sam?" asked my mom with a bemused grin crossing her face. "A big one" said Sam, adding "ya know like that one that we have in the front." We have 2 trees in the front..one being an old oak and the other a giant magnolia... "Which one?" said sistah Jane, who was sitting next to him, with a mouthful of brocoli. The whole table turned from our myriad of other conversations and jokes that are always happening simultaneously with other conversations and focused on Sam. SHOWTIME. "Uh the one with the smooth green leaves" (still not sure...) no one said a thing, except looked at him like 'go on, we need a bit more detail bud.' "Ya know the magola" he said, in all characteristic seriousness. AAAAH! "Oh you mean the magnolia" chuckled bro Tom from down at the far head of the table. "Yes! That!" said Sam. The conversation continued and we discussed how many seeds he should plant or if he should just plant the whole bulbs instead of picking them apart. We also proceeded to explain to him that the location of his hole was exactly on the spot that we have been planning to do an addition to our house on, to which he calmly countered that he thought it would be cool if we built the addition AROUND his tree.
Have to hand it to the kids creativity! Props to you mon frére! You may just be the family's architectural genius.
The conversation turned to other important matters of discussion, like whether we should put a zipline into our imaginary pool or make a hot tub on an island in the middle of it...a few of our recurring family debates. But the next day, sure enough, there Sam was, digging a hole for his magola.
