Mr Sandman's first name is Eric; and a yard of sand is a lot more than you think!

Today was sand day. Eric and I went out and picked up sand for his sandbox. I had Emma at home mowing the lawn to get ready.
I called ahead, to make sure they could sell me "sandbox sand", and yes, they only sell it by the yard, though. That's ok, I thought, even though I have no idea how much a yard of sand is.

How much could it really be, honestly?

A lot, that's how much.

It didn't cost a lot though. It was only $7 per yard. Eric and I got there and followed the guy in the bobcat over to the sandbox sand pile. He said he didn't think we could get an entire yard in the bed of the truck, so he'd just go one bucket load at a time, and I could call him off whenever I felt we had enough. "How many bucket loads make up a yard?" I asked. Wow... 3 as it turns out.

The first load seemed a little... little, so I gave him the go-ahead for one more. Now THAT'S more like it, I thought. Ever see a kid at the dinner table asking for a heaping plate of food that they love? You know they can't eat it all, but they just love it so much, and in the end they find out that much as they love it, they just cannot cram any more into their little bodies. Yeah, that was me at the sandbox sand pile today. I wanted to make sure we had enough, and no matter how much we got, it was going to be $7, that's the minimum.

Eric was reasonably impressed with this guy's bobcat driving skills, and he thought maybe we needed that last bucket load. I came to my senses and called him off just in time.

The trouble with being loaded down with a bobcat is that somehow, that sand has to then come out of the truck bed. By hand, one shovel full at a time. It was a lot.

So Eric got his sandbox filled with about 1/4 of the sand from the truck. I could have easily gotten away with just one bobcat bucket load. But no, I had to hold my plate up and ask for more... Insisting that I could eat it all.

The punishment definitely fit the crime here. I was the one to shovel all the sand out of the bed of the truck one shovel full at a time. It took almost 3 hours with one smoke break in there. But where, you may ask, did the other 3/4 of the sand go? Well, let's just say that Eric isn't the only one who got a sandbox, although his is the only one that's in a box. I put the rest of it out by the lilac bushes in a pile for the other kids.

Eric is very pleased, as am I. Now he not only looks like his Daddy, but he gets to play in the sand like him, too.