Leaves, Leaves Everywhere!

Last week, our friends Alison, Nic, Gab, and Scotty came to visit. We had dinner downtown with them one evening and they came to stay with us the next evening. While Nic worked in the city (after they visited the Chicago sites in our amazing 78 degree weather, the rest of the clan came to stay with us in the 'burbs.

It's fall here. Like... no-more-leaves-on-trees fall. They're ALL on the ground. Literally. Here's Gabby playing in the leaves as Ray raked them to the curb for pickup.

We also received a fun fall package from Ray's family... which included Sprinkles cupcake mix, sprinkles, a fall spatula, chocolate, and socks. Very fun and festive...especially since Gabby opened every individually wrapped present for me! She enjoyed that!

I made the cupcakes on Sunday night and took them to our small group on Monday. These were some seriously decadent pumpkin cupcakes-- like a whole stick of butter decadent--for 12. Yeah, I know!

 End result... minus two which made their way to Ray's belly. :)

I stole borrowed this photo from Nic's picture site to add here... partly because Alison and Scotty didn't make it on the blog otherwise (well, neither did Ray or Nic), but also because I was spotted obviously pregnant in this picture... with really fancy hair I might add.

We had just finished breakfast at Tangerine here in downtown Naperville where we had pancakes the size of basketballs... and were headed for a river walk. It was so nice having them out and sharing our fall leaves and this beautiful time of year before it turns so cold we won't even want to go outside with them.