Beautiful Oregon

It took me three hours to blow the leaves out of our yard. There will be another day of work when the leaves finally fall. The leaves that were cleaned out of the yard this time were mostly from neighbor's trees. You can see that there aren't very many leaves under our trees but the other parts of the lawns were just blanketed in beautiful colored leaves.

It was a lovely day and the temperature required only a light sweater to keep me comfortable.

I started this task of cleaning up the yard by blowing out the beds and the lawn and then mowing the lawns. Then I edged and finished by blowing everything out of the yard.

I took my time and enjoyed the work reminding myself that this is probably the last time I will be cleaning up Fall leaves in this yard.



The Japanese Maple looks spectacular this year. This is the one on the front lawn. The larger tree was pretty too but this one just sort of took my breath away.

There was an awful lot of dead wood under the tree that had to be cleaned out.

I am so lucky that Portland has a program for getting rid of the leaves once they are raked into piles. Well truly, there are two programs.

One is provided by the City and one by God. I got all of the leaves off of our property and into the street to await the street sweeper. Then I took the blower and cleared the gutters so that when the rains come the leaves won't end up in the sewer system.

I was very proud of the long piles of leaves and was just putting all of the tools away when God's program kicked in. The wind blew very hard.

The majority of our leaves were last seen traveling across the street and down Harrison. Fortunately, they blanketed the street and not our neighbor's lawns.

I truly enjoyed my morning working in the yard. You remember how we rarely have trick or treaters in our area? That's because we have huge wind and rain storms on October 31 nearly every year.

I wonder if that will happen again this year? Right now there are very high clouds with bright sunshine above them. Hmmm.

Today was Stake Conference and it was really wonderful. We had many short talks which didn't allow for droaning. The Branch filled up six or seven of the side pews in spite of the fact that 10 of our most active members are on a Deafie Cruise. The number I heard was 4,000 deaf participated! Don was invited to be one of the 130 interpreters but he couldn't justify being gone that long.

Conference was over at noon and we went home, changed our clothes, called Grandma, and headed for Don's and Gaylynne's home for dinner.

We were greeted at the front door by a huge Jack-o-Lantern and Courtney. She looked so cute.

Apparently this pumpkin came as a gift from one of their friends or neighbors.

Each of the children got to clean out their own pumpkins and then Mom and Dad helped them to carve faces on them.

They were all pretty proud of their pumpkins. Melanie is wearing a hat scarf that she created. She's such a little fashion model.

Dayton was asleep when we arrived and he didn't actually wake up until after we had all had dinner and dessert.

We all took an after dinner walk up the hill where we watched two beautiful roosters that Courtney and Grandpa had found.

Gaylynne ran back to the house to call someone they knew who runs a farm in hopes that they would come and get the birds which surely would end up being a coyote's dinner that night.




Emma was such a hoot today. She did get awfully tired toward the end of the afternoon though.

Their home teachers came by and presented the kids with a basket full of Halloween candy. That plus the brownies I baked loaded them up with a lot of sugar. I was surprised that we didn't have to peel the kids off of the ceiling.

Emma climbed up on my lap and soon she was sound asleep. We left their home just as it was beginning to get dark. It was about 6:30 or so. Next week at that time it will be completely dark.

Gaylynne and Don prepared a wonderful ham dinner which we enjoyed so much.




There was a great abundance of food and I get hungry all over again just looking at this photo. Don prepared fresh green beans with garlic and butter.

Everything was soooooooo good.

Courtney set the table and then she cleared it after dinner. She's a hard worker.

Gaylynne has the house decorated with the cutest scarecrows and pumpkins.



The girls are enjoying the holiday season. We invited ourselves to join them on Wednesday evening for their Halloween party.

There is a Four Square Church that puts on quite a party that the kids want to attend.

Our next blog will show the kids in their costumes. I can't wait to see Mr. Dayton Spiderman!!!!