Helpers

 

There are 4 words I imagine every mother enjoys hearing:  Mama, can I help?!  I know hearing them from my kids is heartwarming.  But this last week, the thing that was even better was watching them create their own system for getting the job done. 

The job:  Cleaning up pine cones
The tools (provided by Mom):  rakes

After a few minutes of me showing them how to do it, a few more minutes of half hearted effort on their parts, the kids stopped and looked at me like I was crazy.  They were fine with the job.  In fact it was very exciting to be in on the yard work.  But the tools?  They were not impressed.  Finally, Lane asked, "Can we use our loader and dump trucks?"

And then they got to work...
 

scooping,

loading,

dumping,

and heading back for more.  They spent the afternoon happily moving pine cones about and kept us serenaded with their hilarious renditions of truck and loader noises.