they're falling all over

After a month in our neighborhood, we've come to the conclusion that you either have to learn to love the leaves each fall, or you'll go absolutely crazy trying to get rid of them. We live in an older neighborhood, with tons of mature trees all around us--a wonderful thing in the summer when you want to sit on your shaded front porch and sip lemonade, but not such a wonderful thing come this time of the year when you have to wade through piles of leaves to get to your front door.

All you have to do in our neighborhood to find the houses with kids is drive along the streets during November. The houses with kids in them always have front yards covered by the enormous eruptions of strangely shaped leaf piles that look like messy molehills. There might be an odd bicycle or scooter left in the middle of the leaves, or Ethan's soccer ball perched on the biggest pile and you can usually can find a rake or two somewhere in the mix.
When you have kids it's easy to make fun out of the leaves. We've learned to take a no stress approach, and while we'll rake and load the leaves to the curb, we've conditioned ourselves not to mind when five minutes later one child has scattered the same neat pile of leaves in every direction. And every time the front door opens and the wind blows in a stray handful of leaves across the wood floor in the entryway, I'll just go with the flow.
For now, though, we'll just let them fall, and fall, and fall.