Leaves, leaves and more leaves

Eoin jumped out the hammock this morning to look outside of my bedroom window and asked "wow do we have to rake today the yard is literally covered in leaves".  There were a lot of leaves.  We have been raking the yard about every few days for the past two weeks just to keep up.  It is a seemingly never ending task.  It is met with different feelings from each person in our house, ranging from excitement to get started raking each year to hate for anything to do with raking.  Seamus seems to have figured out as we closed the pool this year that scooping leaves is essentially raking in a pool as well as sweeping them off the deck.... he is the one who hates to rake. 

Today there really were a lot of leaves on the ground.   One of the aspects we were looking for in a house when we moved from the city was having a treed property.  We certainly succeeded in finding it.  We rake more the first rake of the Fall here than we did in the ten years in our previous house.   The prospect of raking the leaves that were on the ground today put Seamus in quite a funk.   Once he got raking with Gramma, who absolutely loves raking, he perked up and had quite a good time.  They had decided that today they were going to try to rake the leaves all into one pile in the middle of the yard instead of smaller piles throughout.   It was massive. 

The mountain of leaves was of course calling out to each of them to jump in.   It apparently also called to them to bury Eoin within it.   They had figured out that if they put a hoodie on Eoin backwards he could cover his face so the leaves wouldn't bug him.   Then the pile of leaves cried out to have them all covered up together with flashlights to light up the hoods that covered their faces.   My first reaction when I found out they buried Eoin was "Yikes" and "Eww there are probably spiders in there".   I managed to keep that to myself.  They were giggling and chatting away so it was difficult not to appreciate the joy.

I find I have to stop myself from interfering in their escapades more often than I would like to.   It is hard to watch them get into mud from head to toe with the thoughts in my head of having to wash the clothes and cleaning the mess that comes with peeling off the muddy clothes.  I would like to be more free spirited or accepting of their free spirited moments. It is not the way I am wired though and I have to work harder at it to balance my needs with theirs.   I will ask myself out loud "why am I wanting to say no?" when I get that feeling that I am saying "no" out of my own need for order.   There are times that a need for order wins out as well.  Today my need for order was not as great as their need to wrap themselves in Fall.