Busy, Busy, Busy

I cannot believe how fast this weekend went. I haven't had a chance to sit down on the computer since Friday, so to sit down today was like coming back to an old friend. I had 82 new e-mail messages, but I only went through a few of them before checking my favorite blogs. I can't believe how it almost seems like having withdrawls to not know what is going on in the bloggy world! I know, I'm pathetic.

We spent Saturday helping our friends, Trevor and Teresa move into their new house. Let me tell you, it is GORGEOUS! I am extremely happy for them and a teensy bit jealous all at the same time. There is so much space! Don't worry, I did not carry boxes or lift anything, I just helped with little things and unpacked the kitchen in the new house. It seemed a little strange to set up someone else's kitchen, but Teresa and I have been best friends for... let me think... fifteen years now (wow, that's a while!) and we pretty much share a brain, so I know that what makes sense to me will be what makes sense to her, too. And she can always change it later if she wants.

We got home a little after eight last night, and even though I took it easy, we were both completely exhausted and did not do much for the rest of the evening. This morning after church we had our favorite photographer and little sister, Amy Parsons (shameless plug, see her fantastic work at www.amyparsons.com) take family photos for our Christmas card. I am trying to get everything done early this year, since at some point I will procrastinate some part of the process, so maybe if I start early enough I will get the cards out on time. I also did not want to wait till the very end and look like a whale in the family pics. Anyway, after pics we went home, got lunch, put the kids down for naps and headed outside. I wanted to do a little cleaning up of the yard, the leaves are really coming down now and we have to rake in stages. For those of you who have never seen our house, we have two acres of mostly lawn which is completely surrounded by trees on all sides. There are many, many acres of trees on three sides of us, and our yard is fenced. What this means is that when the wind blows, all the leaves from all the neighboring trees get stuck in our fence line. And we are not talking about a few leaves, last year, after a big windstorm, we had a long pile of leaves five feet out from the fence and two feet high, running the entire length of the fence. We were pretty ticked off that we had just raked two days before, so we left them there for a while and it rained a lot (shocker!) and the leaves on the bottom of the pile rotted, I mean, composted (that sounds nicer) and got stuck in the gravel of the driveway. It was nasty.

This year, I decided that we would not let the leaves get that deep, so we picked up what was along the fence line so they wouldn't stick to the gravel in the rain. I wanted to do my fall pruning, but a lot of stuff is still in bloom. This year has been so strange, summer seemed to start late and end early, but the flowers are still in bloom and it's almost November. I still have my clematis, daisies, sweet peas, roses, and hydrangea in bloom. I pruned what I could while keeping the blooms and new buds, so we will have to do more later, but at least it's started. I wanted to make sure and not over-work myself, so we were only outside for about an hour, then came back in and I took a nap.

Tomorrow, I will try and resume my regular blogging. I'm sure someone will pee somewhere, and you will all have a laugh at my expense. Until then, have a good night!