Trees are falling all around. . .

The young men and Elder's Quorum have been planning to come and cut down our dead Walnut tree for some time. At last the project was realized this morning after a long evening of Halloween celebrations. The men were gracious to sacrifice sleep and their time by arriving promptly at 8:00am to start the tedious job of chopping down a tree and hauling it off.

By why stop at just one? Our neighbor had a chat with Jhonny this past month about tree cutting. He had a guy who quoted him $1200 to take out his two pine trees and would do ours for $600. Jhonny politely declined the offer saying that though it was a fair price, we had a better deal. He asked, "How much?" "Um, free," he replied. "Well you can't beat that," he said shaking his head.

After sharing this story with me, I wondered why not cut the neighbor's trees, too? Why should we be the only beneficiaries, here? Let's take it a step further shall we?

So after getting the okay from our laborers, I knocked on the neighbor's door and asked if we could take out their trees for them. Mrs. Neighbor looked at me in unbelief when I told her it was a free service by the men from our church and her eyes teared up as she gratefully accepted the offer telling us it was a Godsend.

It would have been great had it ended there, but they insisted on giving us a donation for the church. Okay, rob us of our blessings why don't you? JK. The men and boys worked hard for donuts, drinks and pizza.

It's kind of amazing the attention we drew from the neighborhood. People slowed down to see the action, one car stopped just to watch one tree fall. Our neighbor from the other side came out of his house and talked to me for the first time since we moved in a year and 1/2 ago. The neighbors across the street came out to observe as well. I noticed a kid come out of his house just to watch. It was quite the event. Even Gavin didn't want to miss the action.