october leaves on a sunday afternoon

Before he was even born, Shawn insisted that we needed a real yard for Little Buddy to play and be a boy in.  I thought he was ridiculous.  It would be a long, long time before he'd really need a yard.  (I loved that house.  no rush to leave it).  So while pregnant, we searched and searched for a house to buy with all our requirements AND a yard, all to no avail.  When Little Buddy was two months old, I heard that some acquaintances were going to put their house on the market.  I'd always loved that house.  It seemed to have so much of what we wanted.  Perfection central location.  And a fantabulous yard.

We are now about four and a half years into living in that house.  And I'll admit it.  I was wrong.

No, he didn't really use the yard much that first summer (although I did burn a trench in the top square of our driveway circling it incessantly with LB in the stroller in an effort to occupy him and keep him from crying).  But ever since, it has been childhood utopia as far as we can tell.

We have trees.  Lots and lots of old, old established trees.  I love that.  And with all those trees comes a boy necessity:  sticks.  Lots and lots of sticks.  We have wide open mostly flat space as well.  Woods.  Dirt.  Rocks.  The trees provide amazing awesome shade in the summer, so that we can use our back yard year round even on those hot, humid days.  But we do pay for all of that come October and November.

Leaf season.

The leaves have begun to fall.  It has been more fun every year so far with the kids.  Every year they get more and more into the leaf piles.  The Little Lady will randomly ask for Daddy to come home from work, so he can make another leaf pile.

Sunday before last was a nice warm day with glorious light and I couldn't help but document it.

And then I could have cried last night as I worked on prepping these images.  I accidentally used the websized versions in creating the collages.  Oh well.  They probably won't look as great, but I don't have time to recreate all of that.  Ugg.