At church, I work with the 12- and 13-year-old girls. Though my responsibility is to teach on Sundays, I try to attend their weekly Tuesday night activity at the church when I have a chance.
Since Jamie is in the Bishopric, he has to attend meetings that evening so I always have the kids in tow.
I arrived last week to discover the youth disbanding to various cars to collect food donations for Thanksgiving. Knowing my kids wouldn’t want to be dragged around, we invited ourselves to another ward (congregation’s) activity.
I’m all about letting the best ward win.
Behind our church is a smattering of trees. So lovely is this grove that many people (including my classy sister-in-law Tammy) have their wedding receptions here.
Muchos trees also = muchos leaves.
For a service project, the teen-age boys from my friend’s ward chose to rake the grove, which is no small feat.
We chose to reap the rewards of their labors and spent an hour jumping, racing and burying ourselves in the piles.
Oh yeah, and inviting ourselves to warm ourselves on that dark, chilly night with their hot chocolate.
On Saturday, Bode was invited to a birthday party at his friend Noah’s house. When I arrived, his mom Sam said, unbeknownst to me, that Hadley was invited as well. I returned home to extend the invite but by that time, she was head-deep in pumpkin goop so declined.
When I retrieved Bode a couple of hours later, the boys were attacking a pile of leaves. Hadley was not pleased with their choice of activity.
“NOBODY TOLD ME THERE WOULD BE LEAVES INVOLVED AT THAT BOY’S PARTY!”
Leaf-jumping: the new standard of birthday excellence.
I'm a Canadian-born mom of two, former Denver Post columnist, family travel writer, editor of MileHighMamas.com and 9News contributor. Expert on all things Utah, Denver, family and travel. Lover of laughter and life. Happily married to a man obsessed with growing The Great Pumpkin. 