The Bartlett Family: Thankful for arctic winds???

I wouldn't have thought that I would ever be thankful for a gust of arctic wind but I sure was today!!! We have been waiting and waiting to have enough leaves in our yard for a good cushy jump!!! We have been doing this as a family every year for the last three or four years!! As soon as the kids see the leaves start falling they start asking when we get to rake!! It is fun to have the anticipation build while we wait for our neighbor's trees to get naked (as Michelle would say)! This year, it was taking longer than normal for our leaves to fall. We would get some in the driveway then our kind, helpful neighbor would clean them up for us!! I was getting so annoyed at his kindness because every time he blew the leaves away, all I could think was, well, now we have to wait even longer!! One day Michelle commented to him that he was taking away our jumping leaves and he felt so bad so a few hours later we noticed a bunch of leaves that he had blown up onto our grass!!! We still didn't have enough and I was getting worried because there has been talk of snow and I didn't want to miss our chance. Well, this weekend we got freezing cold weather (literally) and a great wind that blew us more leaves than we needed!!! We had our biggest leaf pile ever!!! Usually as we jump we crush leaves and our pile gets smaller and smaller but today, I just kept grabbing some from our back up pile and it was SO much fun, well, minus the lost mitten!!

I had fun trying to take pictures because it was so dark that I couldn't tell what I was taking pictures of, I had to just click and see what showed up on the camera!!