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| Jack and Henry working on the maze. |
It’s no secret that Jack is the fun parent. For example, when I get on the mower, I want mow quickly and efficiently and do my best to avoid running over little children as I raze down straight-ish lines. When Jack mows, he has the kids sit on his lap, they go speeding off, laughing and screaming, and if they get tired of mowing straight lines, they twist and turn until they’ve created a maze.
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| The finished product. |
In the back pasture is a somewhat unutilized part of our property. Next spring we have plans to plant alfalfa to feed the bees, the cows, and sell the extra to buy the horses hay, but for now, we needed to mow down the foxtail in preparation for sowing alfalfa. Perfect place for a maze, right? Right.
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| Raven, my trusty maze buddy |
While I didn’t think the maze was overly complex, to the kids, who aren’t quite as tall and don’t have as long of legs nor as good as a vantage point, it was terribly frustrating the first time they tried it. They kept running into dead ends and literally were crying because they couldn’t figure it out, convinced they’d have to stay there until they could find the end. Don’t worry, we didn’t make them. Then, while I was gone on Saturday, they spent the morning trying again until they solved it out. That left me as the only one who hadn’t run through the foxtail maze.
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| Everyone watching from the hilltop. |
In some sort of post-apocolyptic young adult novel acting out, Jack and the kids obliged me to run the maze by myself to see how fast I could do it. They sat comfortably atop the pond hill while I trotted through the grass with Raven in front and Zoey on my back.
Once I finished, Jack challenged everyone to do the maze as fast as they could and none of our children are ones to back down from a race. It was a close competition with Claire (naturally–she just has a knack for running) crossing the finish line first.
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| Henry and Zoey had it the best, leaching onto me and Jack for a free ride. |
