Today while Sophie had CCD class (Paul's her teacher), Peter and Angela and I went to return a video to the library. Can I just interrupt my story before I even start, by saying how awesome the library is? It's the greatest deal in town. I ♥ the library so much.

Instead of driving, we decided to walk, and turned it into a nature hike. We gathered as many different kinds of leaves as we could, just scooping up any leaf that grabbed our attention. We found tiny red leaves the size of my thumbnail. Big, feathery lemon-yellow leaves the size of my outspread hand. Long leaves, football-shaped leaves, and the most delicate, lovely, tiny oak leaf ever. (I have a thing for oaks.) At one point we wandered under a maple so gorgeous I almost knocked on the door of the house it was in front of to ask exactly what kind it was. Its leaves carpeted the sidewalk and patterned the grass like a riot of tulips in June. Some leaves were all red, some were red with yellow hearts, and others flirted with shades between the two. By the time we got home, my pockets were full of leaves, Angela was holding seed pods, and Petey clutched a stick in his hand, which he referred to as "a piece of tree."

When we got home we gathered them all in a basket and took out our tree manuals to look them up. While we couldn't find all of them, I looked up to see the new trees Paul planted this summer out in the yard - two maples and two pear trees. Right outside our dining room window, we now have a view of our own gorgeous autumn blaze maple that's already lived up to its name. Out of the next window, we'll see flowering pears in the spring. Surrounding myself with trees - that's something that makes me happy.

What made you happy today?