Never jump in a pile of leaves with a wet sucker.

(…Name that TV special!)

If only I could somehow freeze the landscape right now… the leaves on the trees are SO stunning and the weather is crystal clear.  It got up to 78° here yesterday!  What? 

It’s all I can do not to stop the car every few minutes and snap a few photos on my phone (see above) but people tend to get annoyed when you suddenly stop on the road in front of them.  As they race around me I shamelessly aim my phone and click away.  

I’ve told myself I’ll just stop for this one tree and that will be my last stop…

Then I drive down a tree-lined street and can’t help myself.  Of course these lame, unfocused camera phone pictures don’t even begin to show how incredibly showy God’s creation is at this time of year.  And I can already see that many trees are past their prime.  Sigh.

Time marches on, doesn’t it?  Tree leaves fall.  Grandbabies start making eye contact and smiling because they SEE you when they never could before.  Elderly parents can’t do so many things they used to do without a thought.  It’s almost Christmas when we just barely got done with August.  Hmmm.  I am so thankful that time is something God uses instead of just watching it pass.  He is at work in all our seasons, in all our moments.

We had a fun day with our kids last week – fish and chips at Ivar’s on Lake Washington.  What a beautiful setting!  We arrived when the sun was just dropping but still shining on the tree-lined road that leads into the park – it made the trees look like they were plugged in!

I so love these people!  And Hadley slept through the whole thing!

I’m sorry I have to tell you that we won’t be opening our pumpkin patch to the public this year after all – the seed that took over the backyard produced exactly TWO pumpkins and they are both still green.  So all the trailing vines and blossoms and tiny pumpkin buds?  Pretenders.  It’s very sad.  I feel like Linus – the Great Pumpkin never showed up.

I thought I had a very sincere pumpkin patch too.