Mountains of leaves

We just got home from taking Todd for a walk to the park up the street from our house. There are tons of old trees there and most of them are maples. They have most of their leaves already and there are huge piles of leaves all over the park. It was so delightful to stomp through them and hear the crunch crunch of leaves under our feet. Todd loved running circles through them at his top speed. Theo slept in the baby carrier and we just enjoyed being together on a lovely fall day. I wish we had taken some pictures, but they wouldn't have captured how peaceful and enjoyable it was. The park is called Memorial Park and has a large, circular marble memorial in the center of it. Each marble slab is dedicated to the Whatcom County residents who died in each particular war. Further on in the park there are more trees. I have to be honest and say that we seldom walk this far into the park. We usually just walk Todd up the street, pick up his poop, and walk as far as the garbage can near the marble memorial. I have looked at the trees before, but I never noticed the small, rectangular stones at the base of them. "They aren't headstones?" I thought, but I knew they must have some kind of information on them. They had people's names on them. The trees were pretty big, so they must've been planted a long, long time ago. Andy and I read a few of the names and memorized them so we could go look them up on the memorial. All of the soldiers' names we read were from WWI. It is amazing to think of the sacrifices that were made by people in our community so long ago and now I live here peacefully. It really struck me. Well, my son needs me, so it's my turn to make sacrifices for him so that he can live peacefully, too!