Happy Friday!  We made it through another week.

Are any of you planning to run in the marathon tomorrow?  I keep telling myself I want to train for at least a mini-marathon, but what can I say.  Life happens.  I spend so much time racing around on a daily basis, I have little time left to actually train for a race.  Tom did an excellent story this morning on the marathon.  Tom isn’t running tomorrow, but he could run circles around me on even his worse days.

Yesterday the family and I got plenty of exercise while raking leaves.  I just had to laugh.  My kids recently watched the Charlie Brown Halloween special, so my 5-year-old had to play out one of his favorite scenes from the show.  He ran, jumped in a pile of leaves and proclaimed, “never jump into a pile of leaves with a wet sucker.”  It was adorable.  I have discovered that when you try to get things done with the kids, it takes twice as long.  Then again, it’s twice as much fun.  My daughter would walk through pile after pile and find the leaves with the most brilliant colors.  It kind of reminded me of when I first moved to Indiana.  I couldn’t get over the breath-taking Fall foliage.  My first Fall in Indiana, I took tons of pictures of the trees and sent them to my parents.  You see, my hometown is known for it’s endless pine trees.  At any rate, after awhile I think I started to take our beautiful Autumn seasons for granted.  Thank God for children.  They remind us to pause and take in the beauty that’s all around us.

My family and are looking forward to a fun-filled weekend.  Saturday morning will include bowling, ballet and basketball.  (Yes… each child has his/her own thing.)  Later in the day, we will welcome my mother-in-law, father-in-law and sister-in-law to town.  They have graciously agreed to sit with the children tomorrow night so my husband and I can have another date night.  My hubby and I are attending a fundraiser at a school.  I know times are tough, but I hope people are able to find it in their hearts to dig deep in their pockets to help our kids.

I hope all of you have a wonderful weekend.  Also, may I offer a little advice?  If you have to rake, take a little time to enjoy the beauty of the leaves before you have to pile them all up and stuff them in a bag.