A Christmas Theft...

Things are crazy, for everyone I'm sure. Alex and I are still learning to manage our schedules now that we're both back at work and James is at daycare. Every morning is filled with whatever we didn't get done the night before (clothes for us/James, making lunches, collecting drycleaning to drop off, looking in the refrigerator for something for dinner, laughing because there isn't anything in the refrigerator except organic whole milk, if we're lucky, etc.). Every evening is spent getting James fed and bathed and if we're running on schedule, some playtime and book time too.

Those of you that are parents will laugh at our weakness. We're just not very good at pulling it all together yet. Take our yard for example. We live on a large, tree-covered lot in a heavily wooded neighborhood. Every Fall we curse the trees as it takes 2-3 leaf collections to dig us out of what falls from above. It's lovely for about a week and then it sucks.

This year, we missed the first leaf collection (they only gave us 48 hours notice) and we were only partially done by the second collection which took place on December 1st. Our front yard was still pretty covered and over this past weekend, Alex finally was able to devote some time to raking and bagging what was left. He filled about a dozen large yard bags and raked the remaining leaves into 2 huge piles.

Last night when we came home, the leaves were all gone and there was a pile of empty yard bags where the leaves used to be. The 2 large piles were also completely gone. No leaves. Someone stole our leaves! Too bad you can't see my gleeful smile as I type this.

So what happened? There wasn't a third collection and it wasn't the right day for the recycling people to come collect yard refuse. Plus, the bags were still in our yard and not where we normally leave our garbage cans, etc. Even if someone was collecting for mulching, it seems silly that they would actually take piles of leaves that weren't bagged yet, especially in a wooded neighborhood where you can walk into the woods and collect all the leaves you want.

Did someone's heart grow three sizes in one day? Did our neighbors take pity on us due to the obvious signs that we're falling behind on our Autumn yard maintenance? Our neighbors are all very nice but they're busy too. Who would possibly have the time to do this? I think I need to bake cookies for at least our immediate neighbors which would be a nice thing to do anyway.

Thank you nice neighbor or random person collecting leaves. Thank you so much for giving us the impossible gift of time as we won't have to spend anymore time on raking up those pesky front yard leaves. We really appreciate your generosity and it reestablished my faith in the knowledge that one small act of kindness can mean so much. I plan to pay it forward.

And nice neighbor or random person, there are more leaves where that came from! We have some left in the back yard too, just in case you're interested.

Lauren