Priorities

So. FYI, we're not really doing any Halloween decorations this year. The boys turned down my offers of carving pumpkins and stringing spiderwebs and any other outdoor decorations. But. Asher and Micah are still planning to go trick-or-treating, and Noah still has plans to hang out with his best friend (as has become tradition...this will be year number four). So I guess that will just be enough. :)

While I let the boys choose about all of that, though, I insisted on continuing one specific tradition.

I made the boys let me take some leaf pictures, as I've been doing almost every fall since 2004. (I just missed 2005 on account of Micah being a newborn, lol. Here's last year's post with links to the previous years.)

It was tricky because most of the leaves fell just before a couple days of rain and then it was pretty windy one day...which all meant that there weren't many options available for good leaf piles. But we managed to beat the landscaping crew collecting leaves to this spot and even brought our rakes:

Noah refused to touch any of the leaves on account of them still being damp. ;) But he surprised me by joining in the tree climbing fun after Asher scrambled up there and I had Noah give Micah a boost:

And then he opted out of any jumping photos by being behind the camera:

All in all, it was a much quicker photo shoot than normal, but I'll take it. :) I understand that as these boys are getting older some of our traditions will change, and I'll have to prioritize. So, hooray for leaf walks!!