Scattered Thoughts . . .

After Gee, Lukey and Kenzie made chocolate chip cookies, I was exhausted and in desperate need of a nap so I moved over to the couch where "The Santa Claus" was playing on the television while everyone else cleaned up the kitchen. The kids were exhausted also so I was hoping they would follow me to the couch... no such luck.  I awoke a fairly short time later (it seemed like a short time later, anyway) to the sounds of giggling outside. I got up and went to the window to see if I could figure out the reason for all the wild giggling... Lukey and Kenzie were having a leaf fight with Gee! I grabbed my camera... swapped lenses for my medium telephoto lens... opened the living room window... and started shooting photos from a distance... At this point, Kenzie grabbed her sweatshirt and came inside to see what Papa was doing... I somehow shot more than 500 ph...

The kids were excited to get out in the leaves this past weekend. The weather provided us with a perfect crisp autumn afternoon with mostly overcast skies. The crispness was actually bordering on feeling like we are in for some impending snowfall in the mountains surrounding us but it was still a beautiful autumn afternoon.  With all the excitement about the all the colorful leaves covering the lawn and having rakes within view and ready to be used, the kids put a nice dent in raking the lawn while trying to build the biggest pile of leaves possible for some autumn leafy fun! Someone did more throwing of leaves than actual raking though... ...and, some hula-hooping... Leaf diving...  "I'm going in..." "That's enough... I'm done raking... I'm going in!" Grandma Bear bent a tree down for baby Bear to reach some colorful leaves... After collecting a bunch of colorful autumn leaves, we all went...