Another Week in Pictures

Here are a few pictures from the past week:

We have a couple of new musicians in the family. Hopefully Ailey will pass on some of her expertise.

Socks! SOCKS! Glorrrrrrious Socks! All I want for Christ-mas is my sis-ter's socks, my sis-ter's socks, OH my sis-ter's socks! (Marin)

Andy got to rake this week. There were even more leaves that didn't fit in the bins than last weekend. I'm sure we'll catch up sometime in March.... Though on a positive note, we had a really windy day this week and it blew most of the leaves out of the trees, so at least they're all down and rakeable now.
Again with the sisterly love! Oh, if only the hugs continued all day long....

Silje says "Neener neener!"

"Maybe I'll help out and condition my hair a bit...."
"I'm too tired for a bath."
"Mom's trying to clean me again. Maybe if I just close my eyes she'll put me straight to bed."
If two is a Duet, and four is a Quartet, is this a Triplet? Our neighbor, Lucy, joined Silje and Marin at the piano this week.

Have a good weekend, All.

Turning over a new leaf...

...Or at least a heck of a lot of old ones. We have three maple trees in our yard. Beautiful, especially this time of year. One in particular is huge. H. U. G. E. It looms right over the house so that this time of year the gutters are perpetually clogged with leaves. We have yard waste service weekly through November, and every year the race is on to see if we can get all the leaves disposed of before service goes to monthly.

This weekend it was my turn to rake (the blower doesn't work well on the grass). This is what it looked like before I started:

I gathered the leaves, put them in the big bin, shoved it all down, added more leaves, pushed it down some more, put more in, shoved it down, and on and on until there was one pile left that just wasn't going to make it in there. At least not without getting in the bin and stomping down the leaves with my feet. Andy tried that one time and the yard waste pick-up only got out about half the leaves. We're not trying that again. Here's what was left:

It's enough of a weekly chore without losing the chance to enjoy the sight of a job well done. I had a few hours on Saturday to enjoy looking at my work-well-done, then I woke up Sunday morning to this:

Come on, it could at least take more than a few hours to undo all that hard work! You know, give me a few days to enjoy the green underneath, then let the wind blow and get as many down before the next raking session is due.