Anna's Gingerbread and Leaves!

That is what our Sunday consisted of. It really should have been just leaves, but, by the grace of God (literally...as it always is) the leaves were short work. We started the day by going to another new church. As we were going to pick up the boys from Sunday school, we got to talking to a greeter, Kevin. When we told him where we lived his response was, "You must have a lot of leaves!" As it just so happens, we do, and he offered the use of his leaf blower - this very cool high powered fan on wheels that is awesome for clearing out ground cover. He wouldn't let Shawn leave without his phone number - very nice man. Well, fast forward about 2 hours. Shawn is outside getting ready to start raking. We hadn't called Kevin - not really sure why, just didn't. Anyway, who comes walking up our driveway at that precise moment? Kevin, Bob, a man in his small group, and Kevin's teen daughter, Kara. They were armed with a backpack leaf blower, the push fan, a tarp, and three rakes. Isn't God awesome? The bazillion leaves that were once in our backyard are now on the curb ready for the second leaf pickup - all done in a fraction of the time it would have taken Shawn and I and our dinky rakes. We had them all in for coffee and snacks and Kevin proceeded to educate us on our wood stove also - very useful as we really didn't have any idea just how all of the levers worked together to function efficiently. Wow.

After the outside work was done, the boys tackled their gingerbread houses. I recommend Anna's - if you are in the market - available at IKEA. I used Cakemate decorator icing in the cans and some fun Christmas marzipan pieces from Walmart. Easy, fun, and very yummy! Conner is doing his best Godzilla in the first picture and I just couldn't get a plain old smile out of Grady, so enjoy the funny faces!

We are heading south for Thanksgiving to see the whole fam so this holiday will be filled with quite a bit of travel. Hope you all have a safe and happy Thanksgiving!