Falling For You

These kids in my family are weird. When we got out to Chicago for our big visit last month, the weather was lovely, sunny and clear and just a touch of that familiar autumnal chill, so the Grown Ups had this fabulous idea: let's rake all the leaves in my sister's yard into a big pile and jump in it! Fun, right?

So we raked and piled and organized as much as possible -- trying to get three kids to gather leaves into a single pile in the center of the yard where there is good light is about as simple as trying to explain the infield fly rule to Martians who only speak Swahili -- and made our fun little pile of fun. We figured that the most complicated part of this entire process would be trying to determine who would get to jump in first. Ladies first? Age before beauty?

Except THESE LOONBALL CHILDREN OF OURS did not want to jump in the leaves. We had to negotiate and cajole and bribe and practically threaten them to put the rakes down and stop doing work and GO PLAY, DARN IT. We eventually got them (2/3 of them, anyway) to roll around in the leaves, and thrown them, and stuff. Lollipops might have been involved. (Joey was unconvinced, regardless.)

Shae finally "saved the day" by burying herself in a pile and popping out and yelling "BOO!" at everybody. Except, um, she was in the wrong pile. Instead of the nice pile we made in the yard, she went and hid in the big pile in the front of the house, right on the street, in the pile that was waiting for the industrial leaf sucker. Le sigh.