Evolution

Let me preface this by saying that we live on a wooded acre.  We have a bit of lawn up around the house, but also have many beds and terraces of ivy all around our house and that border of our driveway and fence line with the neighbor.  Of course, when we bought the house in 2008, we thought the natural wooded look would be minimal maintenance.  Well, yeah, kinda.  We just have to push the leaves of a hundred oaks and maples from the ivy beds and the grass onto the wooded hillsides.  That's all.

In the fall of 2008, I was pregnant with twins.  But new to homeownership, I would promise to come help Brian with the leaves after I took a quick nap.  Ha!  Ha!  Brian took care of everything.  God bless him.

In the fall of 2009, I made no such promises.  Breastfeeding two babies, I knew there was no way I was going to be able to be helpful.  Besides, someone had to hold the babies, right?  God bless, Brian, again.

So in the fall of 2010, I figured there had to be SOME way to get out of this.  Ha!  Ends up Brian thinks I have special talents for raking ivy.  AND special problem solving skills for efficiently getting the leaves to the hillside.  Damn.  But that didn't take care of the girls.  They always want to go "outside!" so we figured they'd contentedly play in their Cozy Coupes or on their little slides.  Wrong again.  They whined.  They wanted us to entertain them.  They wanted to go inside.  And thus, I went from avoiding raking leaves altogether, to this:

Next year I'm opting for child labor.