Kite day

I'd never had much success flying kites, but the conditions yesterday were just about perfect:  a cool but sunny and dry weekend day, a strong, fairly constant wind, and a flat, open ~25 acre field next door that'd not yet been planted.  I dug out the kite I'd bought for Elias last summer but put away because I thought he was a bit too young then, and we headed out to the field. 

Happily, the kite practically flew itself!  Handing it off to Elias, he immediately got tangled up in the string.

...but soon we were off and flying agian.  Elias hung on tight..

 ...and was delighted to see his little kite take off into the sky.  But then he let go altogether.  We both ran after the string holder at full speed, as the kite dragged it bouncing along the ground.  I caught up to it in time to increase the tension to save it from the big maple tree in our front yard...

but not soon enough to escape the telephone lines.

 
 
 
After a maybe 5 minutes of kite-flying glory, we were done.  I had to cut the line and let it fly up there all by itself.