Don't wait to rake...

A few weeks ago I posted a photo of our front yard covered in leaves. It got worse! And then it rained!! This weekend we were blessed with sunny skies so we decided to take advantage and get out there and rake up the leaves. I love trees and I am so happy to have tall, beautiful trees in our yard. However, after filling 20 - 30 gallon leaf bags full of leaves (yes, that's 600 gallons of leaves!!) I decided it was a little too much tree love for me! I guess that's what happens when you wait so long. It doesn't help matters when the neighbor pokes his head out and says "WOW! You guys got buried!!" As for disposing of them, we got lucky. Our town offers two weekends in November when people can bring their leaves to dumpsters provided by the city and this weekend happened to be one of those weekends! We disposed of all 600 gallons and are relatively leaf free. To top it off, we decided that all that raking gave us good reason to spend the rest of the day inside watching football! Go 49ers!!!

The sky is falling.....literally!!

This weekend my girlfriend, Andrea, came to visit us from the Napa Valley. Saturday the three of us got up and went for a run. After brunch we decided to walk around the neighborhood for a bit. We had a late lunch at PF Chang's which is a Chinese restaurant near the house. After a trip to Whole Foods we headed back home to settle in for the evening. I'll stop here and add that it had been raining for 6 days. Not just a little rain, torrential rain. On Saturday it turned into a light rain, but it kept going, and going, and going. Okay, back to the story. After Whole Foods we headed home to settle in for the evening. It was about 6p.m. when we arrived back home. C was building us a fire and I was putting away the groceries fully intending on changing into my jammies when I heard Andrea from the guest room sweetly say, "Guys....you have a leak." C and I rushed upstairs to inspect. As we reached the landing at the top of the stairs we saw the huge puddle of water on the floor and side table. We quickly rushed to dry and move the side table away from the water and put towels on the floor. As we worked we noticed that the crack in the ceiling where the leak was coming from...had gotten larger. C climbed up in the attic to see what he could see and found that the insulation was soaked and there was a two inch circle in the roof where the water had come through. At that point we realized...the ceiling was going to fall. We quickly moved the bed to the wall and put down more towels just in time. We barely finished when a two foot chunk fell right out of the ceiling and smattered all over the floor and entire room. After the initial shock, we inspected the ceiling again...it wasn't finished. Another two foot chunk fell right out. What a mess!!! I'd like to claim the credit for cleaning up, and the photos are quite deceiving. C is the one who actually cleaned up the entire room while Andrea and I made dinner. We spent the rest of the evening soaking in the hot tub, writing a letter to our landlords and being thankful once again that the responsibility of repair is not ours. Our landlords were here with a repairman by noon on Sunday. The repairman had the hole patched in no time and now we are just waiting for him to come back and paint. Poor Andrea spent the rest of her time camped out in the family room. On the positive side, our couch is very comfortable and it is pretty cozy by the fire! And just for the record, there were no further mishaps for the remainder of her stay.

Happy Halloween!

This weekend we were visited by our niece, Brandon, who lives up in Washington. She didn't have school on Friday and was able to come visit from Thursday to Saturday evening. She spent Friday with me at school participating in all the fun kindergarten Halloween activities. At the end of the day I asked her what she thought about it. Her reply was, "Those kids are SO naughty!" So insightful! Friday afternoon was spent buying candy to hand out to all the trick-or-treaters and carving a jack-o-lantern to place in the driveway to let people know we had candy! Brandon dressed up as Cleopatra, she loves anything Egyptian! She was quite a hit, everyone she visited felt honored to have the ancient Egyptian queen on their doorstep.
Saturday morning we woke up and took a lovely walk through the park and to the donut shop! What a treat I got when I found my donut was fresh out of the oven! YUM! Well worth the walk in the rain! The rest of the day was spent around the house and in the hot tub but all too soon the time came to take Brandon to be picked up by her Nana. Hard to tell who had more fun!! Hope your Halloween was "Spook"tacular!