Will and Julie Biesinger Family

How many more blisters do you think can come from this?

I LOVE fall...I love the temperature, the colors, the presents on my birthday..., but I really, really, really don't like raking up all the leaves! So tonight, I decided to get the kids together and make a couple of piles of leaves and clean up the yard until the next "leaf-dump" occurs.

The girls came out to help me and stayed as long as it took to take this picture and complain.

Ahhh, how would it be to rake leaves in PEACE!!

Willie didn't seem phased at all by a large rake being swung around...he pretty much moves when he feels like it...most of the time he is wearing more leaves than there are on the ground.

Did I ever mention that I LOVE my vacuum?

For Will's pleasure, I even let Lauren take a picture of me.

It's so fun as a little kid to play in the leaves and roll around in them and throw them in the air...but as an adult, who knows almost every leaf in this picture personally, there's a lot of yucky stuff mixed in with the leaves too....maybe I shouldn't have let Emma do this. I've spent almost a year, wishing.Hoping.Praying that I would never see another one of these -apricot-looking things again. Last year, during all of our construction, we had so many people coming through our front door and bringing one of these - gross, disgusting berries - squished on the bottom of their shoe. They stink like throw-up!!! My grandma Jane said it's a ginkgo tree, and she had never seen it produce these berries in all the years the tree was here. Well, THEY'RE BACK!

Never before has the no-shoes-in-the-house policy been so important and NEVER before has the no-shoes-in-the-house policy been so STRICTLY ENFORCED!

oh, and see my grass seed?

Lauren took these last two pictures...with my camera that I can't get to take good pictures. She did a good job!!