Shopping Carts and Manners

I took Daniel with me for a quick run to King Soopers last night and he showed me how mature he's getting and how much his manners are ingrained into him.  When we came out of the store, toting just a few items, we loaded them into the car and he offered to take the cart back to the cart corral.  I happily took him up on it and watched him carefully look both ways, cross the parking lot's lane, and walk to the corral.  The problem was that he had about 8 carts that were all zig zagged and half sticking out of the corral and couldn't get it in.  Instead of directing him, I watched to see what he'd do.
First, he pushed the cart against the corral so it was not moving.  Then, he walked in and moved every last cart into a line.  Finally, he pushed in his cart.  I was so proud of him for taking the time to do it correctly.  I was even more proud that he did it without me prompting him.  What came next was even more astounding to me, though.
He walked to all three of the carts that were in random parking spots nearby and pushed them into the corral, too!  He carefully watched for cars each time and maneuvered them to avoiding hitting anyone but moved them all back into the cart corral.  As he was moving in the last one, he couldn't quite get it into the line and a King Soopers employee was coming out to bring the carts in.  Daniel waited patiently for him to get to the corral and then asked if he'd help put the cart in because someone had left it in the parking lot.
As I watched my little man come back to the car, I was beaming with pride.  I told him what a great job he did and  his response was, "Well it's really rude for people to leave their shopping carts out and not put them back."  I told him that he was right and that I didn't like it either because I felt like it was a selfish thing to do (because they could hit another car or a child, for that matter, if they rolled with the wind) and a lazy thing to do (because 99% of people who do it are perfectly capable of walking to the corral).  I told him how proud I was of him and he said that it was the polite thing to do.  I also told him it was very nice of him to wait on the boy to help him and he said that THAT was the polite thing to do and he wanted to help the boy but he had to hurry up so we could get home and the milk wouldn't get bad.  I told him that corralling those carts was the boy's job and I'm sure he didn't mind and Daniel said, "It doesn't matter if it's his job.  It's still nice to help him." 
I have to say that there are times that my kids make me want to pull my hair out.  I'm constantly worried that they're going to pick up other people's bad habits or grow up to be rude, entitled jerks like a lot of the kids I run into.  The fact is, though, that these kids have incredible manners and are genuinely sweet children.  Do they act up sometimes?  Absolutely.  But I will take acting up occasionally to jerky, mean little kids any day of the week!  I am feeling very proud of my crazies today.