Austin's First Leaf Pile

We thought that we would share with you this brief story:

First, we should probably preface the story with a some background information...one of the primary reasons why we elected to purchase our home where we did was because the house was in a young neighborhood. There were over 20 children on our cul-de-sac alone, and it only features 11 houses (I think). Christine wanted to have a home surrounded by sense of community and a group children that Austin could grow up with.



Well, little did we know how cool some of the neighborhood kids would be. Four of the five homes adjacent to us on our street have children who absolutely adore Austin. Right now, it is likely that it is because he is the youngest kid on the block...the baby. But, regardless, the kids genuinely love to spend time with him. The children will often ring our doorbell asking if Austin can come out and play with them. Basically, this requires Christine to take Austin outside and sit with him in the grass for 30-60 minutes while the children ogle over him...but it is cute nonetheless.



So...to our most recent story...Austin was outdoors with the children when the kids decided that they wanted to make Austin his first pile of leaves to play in. Granted, Austin is small and the leaf pile wouldn't need to be too large to satisfy his needs, but there was a small hiccup in their plan: there are no real big trees in our neighborhood.



You see, our neighborhood was built on farm land, so there are no trees per see, but rather 2 saplings in each yard that, one day, will help make the neighborhood look/feel a little less barren. Unfortunately, these trees have few leaves to offer, and even fewer of them had actually fallen off the trees...but the children were undeterred. They went around the immediate neighborhood, and went tree to tree, collecting the few leaves that they could find and bringing them back to our yard to build Austin his pile. The result of their efforts can be seen throughout this posting.



In the end, Austin had a lot of fun playing in his leaf pile...and the children were so proud when he did. A pretty cool thing for to witness, really...it is moments like these that help validate all the difficult decisions we have had to make as a family this past year.