Clean up! Clean up!

It has been a rather rainy day...off and on...really good for the flowers!  The oldest neighbor grandchildren went to Vacation Bible School at our church this morning.  That left Elijah out as he isn't old enough to attend.  So we had him come over here for a while.  After lunch, I heard laughter of children and the front door opening and they came in to attack the toy closet..a good thing to do on a rainy afternoon.  This is the closet under our stairs and it is such that toys can have a place and the children can walk in to get what they want to play with...but over time it can get rather disheveled!  It had gotten to the point that no one...not even the smallest could walk into the closet.  The toys had been put back in the closet...but just tossed in at the door.  So Kathy had the youngest two come over to take everything out and then the oldest came over to sort through things and put things back in the closet.  Well, the youngest just wanted to play with each item that came out of the closet!  Finally the oldest three joined us and finished up the job of removing the toys.  The pictures of the children removing the toys are a little blurry...things were going pretty fast!  I was the mender of boxes and Kathy helped put things back in neatly.  After it was all done, they got to choose a toy to play with and had a fun afternoon.  Elijah went home for a nap before it was all cleaned up.  He just knocked on the door and came in to see the clean closet.  His reaction was precious! He is now playing with some of the little things that had been put in baskets.  Woody took a four-mile walk while we were cleaning. He had a bit of a rain delay about midway in his walk.  A thunderstorm blew in and it rained rather hard for a while...but he made it back safely!  After the rain passed, I walked outside when Melany called and I deadheaded and weeded while I talked to her.  Then I had to call my sister to tell her that the leaves of one of the caladium bulbs that we planted had pushed its way through the ground!  The last photo shows the closet all clean and ready for many play sessions (till it is time to straighten it up again...right now they are trying really hard to keep it neat and clean!).