Leaves!

When we first bought the house we were "warned" by the previous owners that we would have a lot of leaves to rake....little did we know....

The first year we thought - How beautiful! How fun! We spent hours raking the leaves into piles and then let the girls jump in them. Because we were tired from the hours of raking we unfortunately left the piles on the lawn and it snowed....which resulted in several dead spots of grass when spring came. Needless to say we learned our lesson.

The next year we were very tempted to take up the little kid who knocked on the door when he offered to rake our lawn for $10. Unfortunately I didn't have any cash, plus I would have felt horrible making him rake it all for only $10. Eventually it either got raked or mowed up, I don't remember. Plus I have avoided the leaves since I learned my lesson the first year.

Last year I had my mom get Dean a leaf blower (I'm pretty sure it was his birthday present). So last year he vacuumed up the leaves. The girls were very disappointed. They loved being able to jump in leaves.

So this year, the girls asked me if I could make leaf piles for them. And they must have caught me in a good mood because I said yes. So Saturday I pulled out the leaf blower and figured out how to make it work and blew all the leaves in our front yard into a huge pile. The pile was huge and the trees were really only about half empty. The girls had a blast. I learned that while the leaf blower is WAY easier then raking - it still takes muscles that I apparently don't have. (My forearms have hurt for the past two days!)