It’s Not Easy Celebrating Earth Day!

Overheard at our breakfast table this morning…

Mommy:  What do you like about our Earth?

Jadon, age 5:  Flowers, water, trees and bushes, animals

Lila, age 3:  The sky and grass because they’re so pretty, the rivers that God made

Mommy:  What can we do to take care of all of these special things?

Earth Day Clean-up Crew

Jadon:  Throw away trash where it belongs, use our own bags [when we go shopping], go on a walk and collect trash, don’t kill animals

Mommy:  Why should we protect our Earth?

Jadon:  If we don’t take care of things, our earth will turn into a big garbage dump; I want to be able to swim in the lake without any garbage 

Lila:  Because our earth was made for everyone, there wouldn’t be any pretty things

The cool thing is that we have this kind of conversation on a regular basis in our house.  We don’t need Earth Day to encourage us to discuss topics like this!  I just hope that all of the Earth-friendly things we do in our family will help our kids become positive role models for others as they get older. 

After breakfast, Jadon came up with the idea to go on a walk through the neighborhood today to find trash to pick up.  What a great way to celebrate Earth Day…that’s my boy!!!  So we all took his suggestion seriously and got a bag to put trash in.  We collected quite a bit and talked about how we’d have to sort out the recyclable stuff from the trash.  As he ventured into the woods to retrieve a piece of trash he saw, he got scratched by a thorn bush.  When he emerged, he announced, “It’s not easy celebrating Earth Day!”