Saturday Jan 17, 2009

This morning was Samuel's 2nd basketball game w/ the YMCA. He's doing great. Despite a slight head injury this morning, everything went great. (honestly, he was knocked down & konked his head on the concrete floor enough to scare the coaches and all of us who were watching, but after a couple minutes, he was totally OK & got back into the game)


After the basketball game, it was time to get our annual "Leaf Party" started. You see, we live on a very heavily wooded street. The street name even has to do with all the trees. And because of all those trees, we also have a ton of leaves!

We get all of the kids involved each year, taking turns w/ the leaf blower, rakes, wheel barrow & whatever else needs to be done.


King was our audience today. He walked back & forth, watching us rake & blow leaves...but he mostly stayed in this position. Have I mentioned how much we love this dog?

Sarah had a good time raking with me, stopping to grin & twirl her rake around fairly often. I think that, truth be told, *I* raked the entire backyard. But I did have some help. Part of the time.


Samuel used the leaf blower for a while. It was hilarious because we could all hear him "singing" over the noise of the blower. And let me tell ya...that was some (umm....) lovely singing we heard. I'm not sure what song it was, but he was singing at the top of his lungs.



We have a giant rock garden in the front yard. We created it by hauling in 2 tons (seriously, 2 tons!) of rocks, one shovelful at a time from the trailer that Larry drove to the rock place to buy the rocks. It was a major job. In the end, we had extra rocks, so they went into a big pile in the backyard. That was 3 1/2 years ago. We've taken some & used them for this project or that project over the years, but most of them have ended up sinking into the ground. Larry needed some rocks to use for another landscaping project, so one of today's jobs was to get down on the ground in the area where we had stacked them & dig for rocks to fill up this bucket.


Each of the kids took turns digging up rocks. At one point, all five of us were on our hands & knees digging for rocks. I told them that I'm sure everyone driving by was wondering what on earth we were doing. Larry joked "just tell 'em I lost a contact."

Speaking of Larry's sillyness, we all got a little goofy & were taking pictures being funny. Sarah snapped these two pictures of Larry & I.



We weren't even totally done at this point......that's ALL leaves.

To give you a little perspective on how big of a pile that is, compare it to my 12 yr old child.

Luckily, our town offers a service to pick up the leaves for you. If you'll get them to the curb in a big pile, they have a big vacuum truck that will come by & suck them up!

By the time we were done, my biceps were screaming & we were all tired! It was a great day!