This weekend we spent most of our time out in the sunshine, working. We painted the porch. We weeded the garden and planted some new flowers (and watered!). We picked beans and scrubbed water buckets. We fenced in our a/c units.

And this weekend, in everything we did, our little people had their hands just as busy and full.

Mr. Fix-It spent a lot of time in the 92+ degree heat.

You’d think that 3 extra pairs of hands would speed things up.

It doesn’t.

He wasn't alone though. Hokie wandered through the cattle shoot and ended up in the backyard Saturday morning.

At least not at first. You have to constantly oversee, correct, redirect, encourage, and fix what they’re working on.

He was helping weed around the units.

But there’s something magic that happens when you work side-by-side with your kids.

They talk to you.

And you talk to them.

The Cowboy braved the heat to be Daddy's Big Helper too.

Talking about things like how taking care of our house is being a good steward like God expects when he blesses us with a home. About how God wants us to have a cheerful attitude even when we’re doing work we don’t enjoy or we’re tired.

No need to worry about this little guy knowing his way around a hammer when he's older.

About the great faith of our revolutionary forefathers that paved the way to our freedom and independence. (About how many of them were Virginians and maybe they would be next!)

Boys learn best by doing--which makes learning from Daddy the best training method around!

And about how to paint, how to build something, how to sweep and clean. How to cook and how to wash and how to shop for groceries. Working beside our kids, we’ve talked about responsibility in the context of keeping up your home. We’ve talked about marriage values in the context of how we work together to provide for the family and home. We’ve talked about planning ahead and the importance of budgeting as we explain how much things costs and how we manage projects.

He really seems to be catching on to this!

And we spend a lot of time talking about how we’re a family–we’re a team. About how we can work together and be kind to each other and help each other and get the job done.

Watching, learning, and working.

And I think it bleeds over into the times we’re not actually working. This weekend the kids had a lot of playtime together. A lot. While the Cowboy was helping Mr. Fix-It with the a/c fence the Ladybug and Speedracer helped me straighten the house and then they played together upstairs without a fuss for almost 2 hours! Without a single fuss!

Then on Sunday while I did some sewing and Mr. Fix-It was doing some duct-work under the house, all 3 of them played upstairs together for another hour or two without any trouble. It wasn’t as quiet as the day before, but they were having fun, not fighting and arguing (thank goodness!), and not watching a movie.

It was another good weekend.