Kids enjoying the outdoors

For those of you who see me on a regular basis, you know that I complain about the kiddos not playing as well outside as you would think they would or should. I think it all comes back to James' influence. Evelyn is content playing by herself and Jefferson loves the outdoors, but James doesn't. And if James isn't happy, ain't no other kiddos happy!

Anyway, yesterday, they spent about 1 1/2 hours outside and a lot of the time they were in the sandbox. I know that a lot of moms are against sandboxes because of the mess, but the way I figure it is this -- if they spend 30 minutes in the sandbox and it takes me 5-10 minutes to clean them off, I still got 20-25 minutes of work/reading/computer done, uninterrupted! And, as happened yesterday, if they go from the sandbox to jumping on the trampoline, the trampoline cleans most of them off, and I have even less work to do. I snapped this picture because they were having such a good time building castles.

See how Jefferson is sitting though? I wonder if that could have anything to do with the welts on the underside of his thighs? Thoughts, anyone?