I did it!

As a stay at home Mom there are things that excite me that I'm sure may not seem that amazing to anyone else...here goes.

I love to garden and mow the lawn. Mowing the lawn is officially a "Stand-Up Dad job", but I have been known, quite often, to mow the lawn for him. I like to, and I think that it gives him more time to play with the kids when he gets home. I'm saying all this so that there won't be anyone who thinks that Stand-Up Dad is shirking his duties. Hee hee!

Our mower was not running well last fall when we left it in the shed, full of gas, all winter. I think we just expected a miracle come Spring. No miracle here. It sounded awful when we used it for the first Spring cut. You know what I mean. It sounded like it was trying to die a slow death.

I decided that I would try to tune it up. It had been about four years since we bought it. I assumed that it probably needed some attention. I went to Home Depot and literally prayed out loud that God would help me find the parts that I needed. He did. Thank you Lord.

I came home and changed the oil, air filter, spark plug and added a gas additive. It started right up. Hallelujah!!!

My joy was short lived. It still smoked and sputtered. I became very discouraged. Stand-Up Dad and I both worked on it and changed the spark plug again, to no avail.

We decided that the next step would be to try to change the fuel filter and if that didn't work, we were off to buy a new mower this weekend. Neither one of us had found time to do it, and the lawn keeps growing.

This afternoon I decided I would start to take the mower apart to find the fuel filter. It took me about an hour and a half. The fuel filter was indeed full of gunk. I cleaned that out and put the whole thing back together. I told Pumpkin, "Here goes nothing!" I could not believe it when it started with no smoke or sputtering. Yahoo! I know that lawn mowers must not be that complex, but it felt like a Divine miracle to me.

I know some of you are laughing at me now. Mostly because we shouldn't have waited four years to tune it up, or because everybody knows how to do this. That's OK, I'm just excited that I fixed it and we won't have to buy a new one.

You can be sure that we will not wait four more years for the next tune up!