Arbor Day 2013

I think this was the first time in nearly 20 years that I did anything to recognize Arbor Day. The only other time I remember was in elementary school, and I only remember that because they sent all the kids home with oak tree saplings. Well, sapling may be too strong a word: oak sticks with stringy roots. So when our friend Jacob made arrangements to get together and plant trees near the Y trail head, I figured why the heck not. It sure didn't hurt that I knew Chad would be the only one in our family who did any real work.

Alongside his friends and family, Chad dug holes, removed rocks and debris, planted trees, and hauled water buckets. Way to represent! Charlie really wanted to help. At least he really wanted to use all the cool equipment the adults were using.

But he's learning that he doesn't always get what he wants. So instead of helping the adults, Charlie got to watch and play with some toy shovels with his friends.

I'm glad Natasha thought to get these to keep the kids occupied. Of course they did a lot more filling in holes than digging, but alas no one fell off the mountain so I consider the day a huge success!

Emmett got away with spending the majority of the day sleeping.

And I spent the majority of the day holding Emmett.

All in all, we had a really good time, and hopefully those trees will do some good up on Y Mount.

Also thanks to Jacob, we had awesome matching shirts to commemorate the day. They have a picture of the Lorax and some Truffula Trees and say Unless. Chad insists that on first glance they say Useless, but we were anything but useless this Arbor Day!

"Unless someone like you cares a whole awful lot, nothing is going to get better. It's not."