Why we will always keep a full gas-can in the garage from here on

One of the things we negotiated into the final contract on our new house from the previous owners was that they included the riding lawn mower. With nearly an acre yard, Chris knew he would need to upgrade from the push-mower he had been using the past nine years at the old house. Plus he was pretty excited to have a new toy.

And the kids were happy about the new tractor mower as well. Luke loved crawling up on the driver’s seat, but would get pretty scared when Chris would start it and ride with him on his lap. The little man always gets a bit sketched with loud noises, especially motors. So once Chris got down to actually wanted to mow, Luke would run inside and hide.

Taylor, on the other hand, was thrilled to ride with Chris while cutting the grass, mostly because she got to wear the big, orange ear muffs and sing at the top of her lungs. She almost treated the tractor as a stage, and I could hear her singing on the farside of the yard while inside the house and over the mower noise. The girl’s got pipes. And she also loves being able to help her Dad steer once in awhile. 

But then after getting used to the noise from a distance, and after seeing how much fun his big sister was having on the tractor, the little man realized that he was ready to help Dad mow too.

Yeah. He REALLY wanted to get on that mower.

And because life can be cruel sometimes, as Chris and Taylor were finishing up the front of the house, the mower ran out of gas right before Luke’s turn. Bummer. But we made it up to him by letting him wear the ear muffs. 

And you can’t feel too bad for him, as I’m sure in about eight years he’s going to be pretty sick of riding that mower every five days in the summer. I mean, that’s why we had kids, right? For the free slave labor. And for the unconditional love and kissable cheeks.