The 43

Autumn has been chugging by so fast, which is a good thing, but there has been one oddity as Halloween approaches: Hardly any of the leaves off our two trees have fallen. The leaves have changed colors, and a few are starting to drop, but it's Oct. 27 and I haven't raked yet. Normally, I would have raked for the first time a few weeks ago. It's not unusual for some trees here in Salt Lake to lose their leaves all at once around the first week of November. But not ours -- a small maple and our big tree of which I have no idea what brand it is. Maybe because spring sucked so bad and our leaves came a little late resulted in them falling late, too. Maybe it's just been the nice weather this fall. I'll have to rake soon, I bet this weekend. We'll be ready.

Today the boys and I went on a mild adventure. OK, it was just to the dinosaur park up in Ogden, but between preschool, work and a gazillion other commitments, we haven't been as adventurous as we were even in the spring. It was a fun adventure on a crisp, sunny fall day we don't normally get in Utah for another few weeks. I packed a lunch -- an accomplishment since we've been hitting McDonald's way too much in the past couple months. Littlest growled at every full-scale dinosaur statue he saw. And at the end of the night, when I asked Eldest what was his favorite part of the day, he said it was the dinosaur park. Very cool.

They broke my heart again. Those damn Cubs made it to the playoffs only to be swept in the first round. On one hand, they weren't tantalizingly close to making the World Series and somehow didn't. But on the other hand, this might have been the best Cubs team since 1984, it fell apart at the worst time. Watching these last three games has been painful. There's always next year, right? Maybe they'll win at least one playoff game in 2009.