Leaves, Leaves and holy buckets more Leaves!

As we all know with fall comes the awesome colors that all of the trees produce.  This is perhaps one of our most favorite time of year.  The cooler temps, and reds, yellows and orange colors make for being outside one of our family's must.  This year was/is no different.  We didn't expect Mississippi to have a fall at all.  For the last few years our fall has consisted of slightly cooler summer temps and not true fall temps of 50 degrees or lower.  Anyway we have truly enjoyed the weather as Mississippi has had exceptional fall weather with 60's during the day and mid to lower 50's and even in the 30's at night.

There is one huge BUT, and that is with our new house we have several trees, unlike the homes that we have lived in previous.  Not to mention with a little over an acre lot all of these trees create some raking for Corey and the kids to do.  A couple of Saturday's ago, Corey and the kids went out and attempted to rake but to no avail!  The wind and nature won that battle, until Corey purchased a lawn sweeper.  Corey say's it was the best $300 he has ever spent.  Within a couple of hours our lawn was in tip top shape.  The by product of that however is we have literally over a ton of leaves and pine needles that need to be discarded.  Pictures below on the mass amount of leave piles.  With still many leaves on our trees, Corey will be at it again for several Saturday's until they are all down.  At least Corey just gets to drive his John Deere with his attachment on the back to do the dirty work and the kids get to play in the huge piles.

Leaf pile number 1.  This pile was about 12-15' long by about 5' wide and about 3.5' high.  

Just another shot at leaf pile number 1.

Kymbal by leaf pile number 2.  As you can easily see, the pile was over Kymbal's head.  

Another shot of the 2nd leaf pile.  This one was bigger then the first pile.

One of the trees in our yard produced these leaves that were such a deep red.  

Ray playing in leaf pile number 2.  She and Kymbal were the only ones willing to play in the pile.  Right after this shot Ray lost her shoe.  We never found it.  I ended up burning this entire pile but I replaced it the day before Thanksgiving with another one just as big.

Ray on top of the pile with the smoke in the back ground.

Kymbal messing around in the leaves.  Yup your nose is clean.

Ray posing in the next few pictures.

This is a classic Otis pose!  If you only knew.

 Kymbal still playing around.  She is such an awesome kid.

She actually let me take a few photos of her.