The Leaves are Falling...

It is Autumn!  And the leaves are falling.  So I guess we better rake them.

 
Last year due to us getting married and many, many feet of snow (unusual for Virginia), we didn't get around to raking leaves until March.  And then it took us until May to finish raking.  We have a decent sized yard, but more so we have pine needles that fall all year long along with a few Maple trees, a Sycamore Gum, and an Oak tree which drop beautiful, colorful leaves. 

So this year we had a little help...

Look at how much fun Elaina is having!  Thanks to everyone's help, we were able to rake our entire yard in an hour and a half!  That is amazing!  It would have taken Isaac and I three months.  We got 43 bags of leaves!  That's crazy.

There were still a few trees who haven't dropped their leaves yet.  Actually, as we were a few bags away from finishing the back yard, a gust of wind came along and blew some of the leaves off the trees, right onto our freshly raked yard.  Everyone exclaimed, "Noooo!"  So in  a couple weeks Isaac and I will rake another 20 bags or so to finish up when the last trees.  We usually get around 60 or so bags each season.  That is some kind of crazy!  But is was wonderful to have the help.  The rest of the leaves will be pretty easy because it shouldn't include so much of that pesky pine!

The missionaries had lots of fun!  We love the missionaries!

And of course after all of our hard work, we had to eat some chilli and gingerbread cookies.  It was supposed to be a chilly day so we thought it would be nice to eat chilli and have hot cocoa and cookies when we were finished raking, but it was a beautiful, warm day.  So much for the hot cocoa.  Maybe next time.  But the cookies were good.  And a couple of them baked together like something you would see at the circus.

Thanks everyone!