Got leaves?

October, Halloween and the birthdays have all come and gone and Thanksgiving quickly approaches. You know what that means? LEAVES. A TON of them. We are lucky enough to have a few old (and I mean 100+ year old) oak trees in our back yard, and our lot backs up to woods that have yet to be cut down for houses - selfishly, I'd like them to stay forever but we'll see. The leaves on these oak trees are some of the last ones to fall and so usually on Thanksgiving weekend, while everyone else is out shopping or eating Turkey leftovers or visiting with family, we are spending the weekend raking leaves and cleaning up. It bums me out every year when we're outside working and the neighbors come home with their Christmas tree on the roof of their car!

Leaf boy

This year, thanks to some wind and rain (thank you Ida!) the yard work is ALL DONE. Matt mowed a couple weeks ago which really cut down on the amount we had to rake, and after some hard work yesterday - thank you WILLIAM, you did an AWESOME JOB! - we are all finished. I am looking forward to a long weekend after the holiday & maybe putting out my Christmas decor!

William hard at work in the yard - what a trooper!

Everyone working hard while Sarah kicks a ball around

Evie posing

Sweet Sarah

In other news, you may or may not have heard about a certain movie that opened this weekend? It had vampires and werewolves or something in it? I may or may not have taken a 7" plastic action figure to said movie Thursday night for the midnight showing of this movie. It's hard to tell, as we were in a hurry to get a good seat, but I think that's him that jumped in front of my camera when I took this picture of the marquee.

This may or may not be Pocket Edward...

Me and my friend Cindy. I may or may not have small bottles of Cabernet in my purse.
And that has to be one of the worst pictures of me ever, but there you go.

Michelle, Kerri, and Megan, who may or may not also be nuts about vampires;
one of them may or may not have also had some wine :)

And finally - I've been the lucky recipient of several awards over the last few months, and have neglected to post on them. I can only say thank you, I haven't forgotten, and I'm going to try and post each of them after my future blog posts until I've gotten through them all. Truly, I appreciate you all thinking of me when passing them out! Today's post is:



Della from Della Grace's Life passed me this one last week, she's a sweetheart who really makes a terrific bang with her shopping bucks, and is super-creative - go check her out!


Rules after accepting the award are:

1. Tell 7 things that you don't already know about me.
2. Name 7 other blogs to receive this award.
3. Leave a comment on each of the blogs I nominated.
4. Thank the person who gave you the award.

The seven things you may or may not already know about me - hmm, this is hard:

1. I have cold feet - like ICY cold. Except when I'm hot, then they get all swollen and red and I want to stand in a bucket of ice water. Weird. I don't wear slippers or socks around the house because then they get hot. I'd rather them be cold.
2. I can read and follow directions; that, however, does not give me the ability to be an expert at something, much to my dismay. Jack of all trades, master of none am I.
3. I procrastinate. Terribly. Why do I do this?
4. I love coffee - just kidding, you already know that - but what you don't know is I don't like flavored coffee, unless it's a Pumpkin Latte from Starbucks. Otherwise, give it to me with just a little sugar and half and half.
5. Someday I want to travel the world with my sweet hubby without the kids. Think that will ever happen?
6. I like to self-diagnose using the internet. Which is terrible, because I'm a hypochondriac.
7. I prefer to Christmas shop online because I don't have to leave the house or haul my kids around, and I know whether stuff is in stock or not. And getting packages makes me happy :)

I now pass the Kreativ Blogger award on to:

1. Laurel @ Ducks in a Row
2. Kate @ Centsational Girl
3. Vivienne @ The V Spot
4. Jen @ Tatertots and Jello
5. Mrs. Jones
6. Jenny @ Jenny Kate's Spot
7. Connie @ The Young and Relentless

All of these ladies are incredibly talented with crafts or words so if you don't already, go visit them. And to those I haven't mentioned yet, I have a TON of awards to pass on so stay tuned :)