Early on the morning of August 30, 2005 I was awoke by my son. He spoke sternly from his crib, "If you don't drag your lazy butt out of bed before noon we are never going to finish cleaning the yard today." (To our defense, it was only 5 am) Nevertheless, he put us to work. He grabbed his rake and his little red wheel barrel and gave us marching orders, despite our insistence that we could handle the work ourselves (I was never really sure if he was just eager to help, or if he didn't trust us to do it right.) Occasionally he would taunt us about our techniques or lack of stamina, but mostly he was cheerful. At one point he jumped out from behind a bush and yelled, "DAAAAA!!!!!!!" (Scared his mom half to death.) As the work came to an end she asked him if he remembered who gave him that little red wheel barrel. He looked her straight in the eye and said, "Great Grandpa Junior gave me this wheel barrel, and I will miss him very much."
(I could almost hear Junior say, "Well I'll be damned!)
