Fall Leaves

We don't have too many trees at our house that require the raking of leaves every fall. All our trees are out on the park strip in the back of our yard and on the other side of the fence so they just blow away every year. So our kids have been terribly deprived of the opportunity to rake leaves. They have heard about how fun it is to rake up a pile of leaves and then jump in the pile. I know they have longed for the day to finally be able to do that but sadly they knew they would be old teenagers before they would get to experience it and then they would have to say they were too old to do such childish things, but they might just do it to show their younger sisters how to do it. Anyway this year we promised a friend that we would come and rake her leaves since she let us have all of her grapes and apples. We thought it was the least we could do. She has a couple of big sycamore trees as well as several others so we knew there would be plenty of leaves to play in. The weekend we were planning on doing it a storm rolled through so we didn't make it till Monday after school only to find out that her brother had come and raked up a bunch over the weekend so there weren't as many as there could be but we still raked up about 10 bags worth. Lets just say the kids had a blast. We told them there would be no jumping and playing until the last pile needed to be picked up. They went to town. That's not to say that there weren't a few leave throwing wars going on but we were done in no time flat and then I pulled out the camera and started snapping away.

I think this will have to become a tradition and with how much fun the kids had I don't think they will have problems jumping in them even as teenagers!