Leaves!

It's FALL!  Which means all the leaves that have been piling up in front of our house for 3 months finally have a legitimate reason for being there.  (The trees here have some serious anticipation issues and try to beat all the other deciduous trees in the area to the punch.)  And since the weather was nice and cool Friday, a bit of exercise seemed worthwhile to have some fun.  So, I took Josh, A and L outside to make a leaf pile (Ben and Michael being elsewhere).  For 20 minutes we labored to make this pile, me with my feet and the kids filling paper bags, before Josh wished aloud for something to speed up the process.  I told him that most people use rakes to do this.  He reminded me that we have one in the backyard.  Then I felt foolish.  We trekked around back to retrieve the rake and brought it to the front to quickly finish the job.  Our neighbor, S, joined us and here is what we made:

 Of course, there was a lot of discussion about who would get to jump in first.  We solved the dilemma by making the pile big enough for everyone.

As one would expect, it turned into a free-for-all.

Due to either the limitations of my camera or operator incompetence or a tragic combination of both, I have lots of blurry action shots.

The kids had a great time and even fought over using the rake to fix the pile after it sustained too many jumps.  I love it when kids fight over who gets to do work.  Then, sadly, there was a mishap involving Josh's nose and someone's leg (unknown, but there were three possibilities), so he left the party and went inside.  Occupational hazard of being a kid.  But, here is a cute picture of A, S and L.

Now that I know remember that we have a rake, we'll definitely do this again.