My middle child – Sean – turns 6 tomorrow!

And I wanted to share an interesting fact about him.

Sean is our resident treasure hunter. He always has his eyes on the ground, and ALWAYS he finds the most amazing things.

It’s such a hilarious little quirk. And definitely a family joke.

We’ll walk through the shops, or through a car park, or a busy fruit market, or the zoo, or beach –and when we’ve finished walking, I’ll feel a tug on my sleeve and he’ll say, “Hey Mum, look what I found!”.

He started off finding a lot of JUNK and broken things, like bottle caps, paper clips, drinking straws, half eaten lollipops, water bottle tops, empty gum boxes. But now that he’s older, he’s knows how to scan past those things and just pick up the good stuff like pens, toys, money, maps and other things that might be of interest.

One time we were out, he found a cute wooden monkey toy, a pair of sunglasses, a marble, a mobile phone charm, a charity pen and a half-used notebook.

I put a large box in his room, so that has a place keep all his treasures. It used to be really hard to manage all the junk he wanted to drag into his room, but now he’s a lot better. Like I said, he only keeps the good stuff.

In fact, I do believe he has reached a stage where he just enjoys the pleasure of finding things, and doesn’t need to keep the actual thing anymore.

Some times, when we are out, and when I have a bit of time up my sleeve, I like to join him. We’ll be at the park, and I’ll start scanning the ground for objects. And it’s rather surprising to realise the kind of stuff you can find, when you take the time to look.

Anyway, this particular day, we were on holiday at a beach.

We walked 1 kilometre along a huge deserted beach, covered in seaweed and shells and all kinds of goodies. I decided to have a competition with him. You know… to see who could find the coolest stuff.

You would not believe the crap we found!

But he won hands down.

My son managed to find TWO DIFFERENT men’s sandals, both for the same right foot, both the same size, and both on opposite ends of the beach, and both half buried in the sand.

It was gold!