The Wonders of Mowing the Lawn

We lived in rental housing until we bought this house two years ago. We never had responsibility for lawn care in the rentals. Either a lawn service or the owner of the rental came and mowed the lawn. The children always enjoyed watching their work from the windows.
Then we bought our first house and moved to Mansfield. Within a week, Kyle mowed the lawn. To most people, that would seem to be a mundane responsibility that came along with home ownership. But to our children, mowing the lawn was a wondrous thing, and Daddy doing it bestowed upon him near super-hero status. All the children went out to watch. Before long, they were following along behind him, tracing his steps as he went back and forth across the lawn. Sometimes they even cheered him on in his work. If Kyle waited till late in the evening to mow, the children wanted to stay up late to watch. They were excited to be able to help by gathering sticks up off the grass or stepping on the sprinkler heads to protect them from the mower blades.
I didn't expect the excitement to last, but it has. Brittany rarely follows along now, but she will still go out to watch. Megan, Josh, and Paul still follow Kyle's footsteps back and forth. Josh especially enjoys the lawn mowing, and Paul has picked up on the excitement.
Last week, I got pictures of the boys helping Kyle with the mowing. Megan had been out earlier, but had gone inside before I thought to take pictures. There are some pictures of the boys following in Kyle's footsteps, and you can also see that Kyle gave each of them a chance to help push the mower. Paul could barely reach the handle bar and had to walk on his toes. I had intended to use the pictures for a blog, but Kyle already posted them on the last blog. They are at the end of the series of pictures of Erica.