A great weekend to be in CLE...

Fall has definitely arrived here in Cleveland and between the sunshine this weekend and the rainbow of foliage lit from within, the city is glowing.  We've just tucked in two exhausted children, run ragged by a steady stream of fun and too many trick-or-treating events.  And still 6 days til Halloween...


Wednesday:  Math and Science Night at St. Paul's.  The cutest thing ever, preschool rooms full of Halloween themed games, crafts, and sensory activities.  So much creativity, so many families, so many beautiful little preschoolers milling about, in their element.   A fun night, but bittersweet as it is our last one.  Hard to imagine that we will not have a child at St. Paul's next year.  I will miss these rooms, these teachers, the warmth and joy they have brought to our family.  I loved watching Ivy, confident and comfortable, mixing with her friends and heading off on her own.  She is being nurtured so well in this place.  As for Jack-- I think he could feel his age this time, suddenly discovering that the preschool activities are aimed at, well, preschoolers, stating that he thought there were more fun things last year....

He still managed to enjoy himself quite a bit, never fear.

Pumpkin bowling!

Always a favorite-- face painting with wet colored pencils.  Ivy was heartbroken to have this face washed off at bedtime. 

Friday-- a glorious fall evening and a perfect night for a homecoming parade.  Jack and Ivy marched for Boulevard (or rather, rode in the back of a pickup truck).

This robot marched too.  The kids are in aprons and goggles to represent our STEM school!  Boulevard scientists!

This parade is the cutest.  Seriously. 

 Then, because our family doesn't actually care about football, it turns out, we gave away our "parade participant" wristbands and headed to the Cedar-Lee candy crawl instead of the game.

It was a hoot.  We ran into just about every person we know. Seriously, at least 6 families and several of Jack's classmates.

The businesses that participated were staffed by delightfully friendly people.  There were lots of dogs.  The trees and sky glowed with dusk color.  The sidewalks were packed with happy families and costumed little ones.

A definite "love where I live" moment, that's for sure...

We followed it up this morning with yet another Halloween event, this time at our local grocery store, Zagara's.  I do love Zagara's.  Today, it was chock full of costumes and sample tables and pumpkin decorating and the friendly workers we've come to know over the years.  Our little corner of the Heights has such a cozy sense of community.  Its easy to take it for granted -- and so good to be reminded of it today...

After starting my day with a perfectly lovely 5 mile run in the Garfield Metroparks, and then a dress rehearsal of some terrifically fun music for my WSC concert tomorrow, I came home to discover that the day had only gotten more beautiful, so we has no choice but to go out to play.  We  reveled in another of our city's gems-- the Lagoon at Wade Oval.   How lucky we are to have this in our backyard...

Leaf fights!  

This boy was tremendously excited to have a leaf fight.  Tremendously. Excited. 

This girl didn't mind much either.

Ivy wanted to go for a walk around the lake to go see "the strange stone picture".  She loves this statue very much.

What is there to do on a 70 degree day six days before Halloween, except go for ice cream?

It was a glorious afternoon. Could have stayed forever at those picnic tables, my bare toes in the grass, my children happy and sticky-faced , the sun warm on my back.

But of course, we had to head home to get ready for a Halloween Event.  

Yes.  A third one.  

Yes, we're a little crazy.

Stay tuned for pictures from the Boo-tanical Bash..

In the mean time, a couple of other moments from this week...

Jack was most proud to invent the "homework playdate", allowing him to have a friend over on a school day.   The boys did a great job buckling down and getting work done right away, before proceeding to play video games for an hour.   Jack is so funny.  He has decided that he should have his friends over in a pattern, first Brooks, then Finn, then a sleepover at Max's.  It is so fun to see him developing his own friendships. 

And-- picture day for Ivy.  She decided to wear her fanciest dress.  Of course.  I can't wait to see her class picture- Ivy in her red holiday dress surrounded by 6 little boys in jeans and tees.  She's something special, alright.

Mid-October...

It's mid-October and time for a little catch up here on the blog.  Two weekends' worth of pictures in one!  Get ready to scroll...

Last Sunday.  A strange south wind blew out over the lake during a visit to Edgewater.  Kite-flying was more challenging than normal ....

 ... but the preternaturally calm lake was bewitching.  Corydon was more calm than usual, without the waves to jump and bark over, and we all found ourselves just relaxing, drawing in the sand, staring out at the blue of it all...

The yellow-gold cast of the trees was the only sign of October on this 70 degree Sunday in the CLE...  

We spent quite a while on the end of the breakwall,  drawing with graphite, sunning, jumping...

It was hard to leave.

Luckily, we had Soup to look forward to.   We spent the afternoon cooking and shining up the house...

Ivy came up with the idea of using some old decorative paper napkins as placemats, carefully arranging them all herself...

.... to get ready for this...

A warm and lovely gathering of friends,  not our biggest ever but plenty of chaos, conversation, and fun to be found.  The children are getting so big!  Large groups kept disappearing up to the bedrooms, and the living areas were often full of quiet conversation and adults with enough hands free to eat and drink a glass of wine too.  Times have certainly changed since we began this tradition...

The golden glow of the weekend was one of the things that got us through the week, which was marked by some surreal anxiety when the Ebola outbreak, so recently arrived on US soil, raised a spectre in Cleveland via a Frontier airline flight.  One of my co-workers, it turns out, flew home from Dallas on the same plane (though not the same  flight) as the Texan nurse who was diagnosed the next morning.  A robo-call at midnight on Wednesday informed me that my building would be closed the next day for cleaning, and that my co-worker would not be returning to work for the 21-day incubation period.

Needless to say, I didn't sleep much that night.

I'm prone to anxiety about illness in general, and Ebola, in all its gruesome glory, has always been terrifying to me. Low-grade anxiety has been with me since the outbreak in Africa hit the news over the summer.   I've been able to keep things at bay since the end of September by concentrating on how far we are from Texas.  And then the fear lands in Cleveland for a layover.   Of course.  Of all the cities...  And I know, I know-- this is an incredibly low risk situation for all involved-- my co-worker who was on that plane as well as my family.  And yet!  If everyone else is freaking out, shouldn't I freak out too?  I spent much of my day off on Thursday doing laundry and cleaning the bathroom and wondering if we should stop going to public places...

What is interesting to me, though, is that I don't seem to be able to sustain high-level, up-all-night anxiety for very long.  Like my emotions have stretch-receptors or something, adapting to the presence of a threat and pushing it into the background until they sense movement.

Its still there, the fear, and I think it will be for a long time because I don't think this outbreak is ending any time soon.  a little edge of fear is tinting my view of the world, making me a little less patient, a little more distracted, a little less present than I ought to be.  But for most of the weekend I've been able to push it under the surface and concentrate on some lovely moments with family and friends.  The good stuff.  Epidemics and scary diseases are that much more terrifying, I think because what they threaten is so wonderfully good.  I don't want anything bad to touch this life of mine, you know?

Because I've got friends like this...

  ( who take me out for Ethiopian food and coffee and all the cocktails and uproarious conversation and laughter...)

And my kids have real friends, who spend the night and play in their rooms, and they are making the memories that will define "childhood" for them, and it's looking pretty good so far...

And I have this great family.  They come to visit and give us an excuse to go to Dewey's, they love on my children, they watch us march in dog costume parades...

Not to mention the fact that there are, in this grand world, things like Dewey's pizza and dog costume parades...

And I live in this great place-- a short walk from these woods...

...and a short drive from this view....

..and it is fall and the colors are glorious and the air is crisp and today we walked in muddy fields and made corn husk dolls and worked a plow and made apple butter and ate mini-donuts and played in a hay maze out in the sunshine.

 Feeling gratitude tonight for all that I get to enjoy.  Looking forward to going back to my usual slate of worries, as soon as possible...