Gratitude

So much gratitude.

We've had a simply wonderful five days, together as a family, celebrating a holiday, welcoming winter, enjoying life.

We have so much to be thankful for.

My family.  The small one, the large one, the ones we see weekly, the ones we see far too little of... we are blessed by each of them, their generosity and unconditional love.  So many models of lives well lived.

Our health.  My children are strong and sure footed.  My husband and I are able bodies and can run and play with them.  We can work and clean and build and dream big dreams.

My dog.  She gets her own line.  Ten years with this wonderful creature.  How did we get so lucky??

Our friends.  This ever-widening circle of humans who I love.  Like-minded people who are fun to be around, who care and support and help; old friends with shared, treasured memories, and new ones who will listen to all my old stories told again. Friends whose children become part of our tribe, the next generation of humans for me to love.  I treasure them all.

Music.  I am grateful to be able to sing, to make music with others once a week, to share music with my children and give them piano lessons even when it is hard to make them practice.

Running.  Even if I'm not doing a lot of it right now, I am grateful for the focus of it, for the goals I have achieved, for the way those goals push me to get up in the morning and get outside and take in my world in a different, deeper-breathing sort of way.

Our home.  It is a lot of work, this old place, trying to keep her old bones in good shape.  But then we discover beautiful hardwood in the bedroom and I fall in love all over again.  It is a good, strong house that keeps us warm and dry and we are lucky for the opportunity to care for it.

Our dreams.  I am so grateful to be in a place in life where I am comfortable enough to dream of things like lake houses and second careers and what I want to do next with  my time. I  may or may not realize any of these dreams but just the having of them tells me that my life is good enough, secure enough, to let me think beyond survival and we are so lucky to be in this place.  I do not take anything for granted.

Photo post with play by play recounting of our fabulous weekend: coming soon.

Snowy Weather

Winter arrived in Cleveland this week.

As winter did not wait for fall to clear out first, our pristine snowy yard is now dotted with leaves, buckeye clusters reaching up like yellow fingers through the blanket of white.

Winter doesn't seem to care, though.

It is serious about being here.
So is Corydon....

This first blast of winter has managed to stay around for almost a week  now.  The children are overjoyed.

They have been sledding 3 times and counting.

They have thrown many snowballs.

They have a made a snowman.

They have caught some air on sled-hill jumps and pronounced it "really really super fun!"

They don't have to drive to work in this stuff.

Lucky ducks.

So they get to enjoy it, fully and simply. 

And, through them, so do I.  

I think it may be a long, cold, slow-driving winter this year.

But around here, we will be flashing our "skiier's smiles" and making the most of it. 

Seek the joy!

Bits of Ordinary

Apologies for the quiet, dear readers.  It's been a quiet sort of start to November.  Sandwiched in between our extra-long Halloween and the early, brilliant-white start to winter this weekend, our family enjoyed two weeks of ordinary life.  While I'm not doing particularly well with daily gratitude journaling this November, I do want you all to know that I have been grateful for each of these days of calm, the blessings of an ordinary life.  I've not necessarily been grateful for all of the dishes done by hand (thank you broken dishwasher!) or for the early dark and tired evenings (thank you daylight savings time!)... but rather for the health and happiness of my family, for our community, for our friends, for my growing children, for glowing leaves in fading fall light.  

Here are some bits of the ordinary for you:

Cleveland Heights Chili Cook-off.

Here's Ivy helping to pull raffle tickets.  Attending this fundraiser at our local community center has become a tradition for our family.  Its a small event, cozy and fun, an easy way to see a few neighbors, meet local restaurant owners, and show our support for this community.  It's also become a tradition to win something at the raffle.  In fact, in this picture Ivy is about to draw her own name for a Spring sports registration.  She exclaimed, "Oh good!  Now I can play soccer!!"  

 An aforementiond trip to IKEA.

The silver lining of daylight savings time:  extra time to drive to Pennsylvania.  Lovely day for a drive.  New bed pictured here?  Still in boxes.  At least we've gotten the carpet up out of the room...

Morning walks in the metroparks..

The other silver lining of daylight savings time:  more light in the morning, allowing me to sneak in extra sleep by skipping the gym in favor of a walk in the woods.  Metroparks conveniently located on the way to work helped to justify this, as did the fact that I'll have all winter to work out indoors.  A brisk walk may not burn the calories of a run on the treadmill, but it is certainly better for the soul.  Especially when the morning sun sets the trees afire.  

 Piano Lessons:  If you do it for one, you'd better be ready to do it for both... Jack was inspired by watching Ivy's second lesson and so we signed him up too.  Now we start our week with an hour at Miss Kathy's house on Monday evenings, as the kids alternately work at the piano, or do quiet work in the other room with me.  The lesson hour is a relaxing respite.  The "trying to get them to practice all week" part?  Not so much.  Jack's perfectionism makes every practice session a struggle, but he is motivated by mastery of each piece and, so far, has kept coming back to work on his goals each time he breaks down.  We'll see as things get harder.  I hope he can learn something of perserverance and the value of mistakes-as-learning through this experience... but I know better than to expect that as piano lessons never seemed to do that for me...

Ivy, on the other hand?  unfazed by mistakes or her very incremental progress (Kathy says to never fear, she's so young...). She's equally excited to work at the piano and to sit with me and create things like this spectacular cat...

Birthdays!  Ivy woke up on November 8th and declared, "My friends are 5 today!!"  (didn't hurt that we'd seen them just the night before and she'd been reminded, many times, of the upcoming celebrations...)
We had a grand time at their "ice cream party" to celebrate...

It's hard to believe these two are those same tiny tiny babies we met 5 years ago.  They are still amazing in every way.

Book sales!  Because what we need, is more books.

I think we have a problem.

I just love this picture. Tiny girl with a tiny book.

 Evenings out with friends...

We enjoyed a stunning fall evening downtown, with time for a walk around the new Mall and Convention Center(quickly becoming one of my favorite Cleveland spots) and then a meetup with Jamo and Casey, in town on their way back to DC, at Greenhouse Tavern.  We shared a pig's head (and wings of course) and a few rounds of fancy cocktails, and the worst dessert I've ever had (aptly named the "leaf pile") before hosting our friends for the night.

Jamo and Casey are really wonderful people.  Wishing we could see them more often, but grateful for the time we had...

Stay tuned for an onslaught of pictures and videos celebrating the first snow of the season.

(I am trying hard to celebrate it, instead of just dreading what may be a very long season of dreadful commutes... wish me luck!)

Haloweening-- a tale of two weekends

This year's Halloween season has stretched out nicely, with plenty of opportunities for the children to  showcase Nat's homemade costumes and gather far too much candy.  You've already heard about the Lee Road candy crawl.  The next day-- a perfect evening to wander the Botanical Gardens by night. The pictures don't do it justice as they can't capture the smell of woodsmoke from the chimneas on the patio, or the perfect temperature of the air, or the spooky pirate music emanating from the treehouse, or any of the magic of the crowded, darkened Children's garden, where we could hardly keep track of which candy stations we'd visited.   Here's a little (kind of  blurry) taste, though...

The only one with Ivy's full Jawa costume in place...

This guy, and his lightsaber...

Spooky magic...

Fortune telling...

What happens when you take Darth Vader to a party...

drinking problem...

Amanda, dressed as Darth Vader,  dressed as a pumpkin... Meta.

Donuts!  And, all the infernal props.  Note to self:  next year, no props with the costumes. 

OK, going on.


 Last Saturday, all day, was one of those perfect fall days that lead you to believe the weather will just stay like that forever.  Based on that assumption, we made plans to meet friends at the beach the next day, eager to share the joy of our "Lake Sundays".

It WAS a beautiful day.

And windy.  Very, very windy.

And kind of cold.

 And it sure seemed like we weren't going to have a very good time when we first got there.

In fact, I was feeling more than a little guilty about talking our friends, and my mom, and my sister, all into joining us.

Lookie!!  Three springers!!!

 But we need not have feared.  The lake worked it's magic.

 Boys wrestled and dogs ran and adults talked and our cheeks and ears burned with cold and it was really pretty wonderful.

 If we'd known the turn the weather was to take by the following weekend, we might have enjoyed it even more.

Ivy sure loves Joe.

But I think we still did pretty well...

Running up the hill... so they could roll back down... through the leaves... in the sunshine...

A few hours back home to make our windblown selves presentable, and then we topped off the day with the WSC fall concert.  A 5:00pm start time meant we could bring the kids.  Here they are learning about the violin from one of our performers.

 It was a lovely concert, full of wonderful, big-voiced, audience friendly songs.  I had at least 75% of the music memorized, which felt great.  And left me able to look out into the audience and see my whole family there.  Which also felt great.  The kids were each able to name a favorite part (Ivy said, "that first song you sang" -- Christiansen's Praise to the Lord-- while Jack preferred "the one with the banjo and fiddle-- Bile them Cabbage Down...) so they must have enjoyed the experience at least a little bit..

Our weekend stretched on a little bit into the work week, as we headed to Tiffany's home to spend the weekend with good friends from out of town.  It was a splendid afternoon, easy to pretend the weekend wasn't over yet...

Porch-sitting weather... (at Eton Place to shop at Trader Joe's and admire the iPhone 6 at the Apple store)

Football-playing weather (these boys are getting pretty good at passing!)

Eating-pizza-in-the-grass weather...

 It was great to spend an evening catching up with Becky...

..made even better by the fact that the kids all had a blast together...

We sure do love our friends.

Fast forward through the week...
Rainy Tuesday.  Nat and I decided to take our walk at Lakewood Park despite the drizzle-- and we were rewarded with this:

Thursday-- the kids have started gymnastics!  They had a blast.  The classes are 90 minutes long and Jack  was a wild man, pushing his little self to the limit the entire time.  He had sore abs the next day!  He'll be one strong little boy by the end of this... I am just so glad he decided to give it a try, as it's been quite a process to talk him into this.  Despite his sometimes-paralyzing fear of making mistakes, he put himself out there and took tons of risks, trying new skills left and right-- and ended the day smiling.  So proud of him.  Ivy, of course, had no problem heading off into the huge, crowded gym with her new teacher.  Crazy how different two kids can be...

We had originally planned to attend yet another Halloween event on Thursday-- the Coventry Road candy crawl, because ALL the business districts have to have one, of course-- but the kids were too wiped out to do anything more than have dinner and ice cream at McDonalds.  :)

And... Halloween!  Finally!

A grueling day of school parties...

... culminating in a drizzly, chilly, very Halloween-y evening that was just about right..

This year's porch decor...

Jack's pumpkin.

Ivy's...

One of our crafty attempts -- glowing spider eggs...

And another-- Nat's brainstorm, trick-or-treat pumpkin plus flashlight plus trash bag.  Pinterest worthy, no?

The best of the posed shots before heading out:

The only one we got of Ivy as an actual Jawa ( with the third and finally-right version of the glowing eyes) before she abandoned her mask and hood in favor of a witch hat...

And off they go!

 Passing out candy at home, afterwards...

Ivy was so terribly proud of this awful tatoo on her neck.  She was hoping to wear it to school on Monday to show her friends...  Sadly... ahem... it has come off already..

Trading loot and eating pizza back at home while the adults drank cocoa with Bailey's and lounged.   Just what the doctor ordered.

It's been a cold and wet weekend since then.  We took it easy on Saturday with an unheard of, "mostly at home" day, bowing out of two parties because of a coughing and sneezing boy.

Couldn't let that happen two days in a row, so today we went to Ikea.   It was a nice day for a drive, plus we had an extra hour today.  Why not?

We are currently grappling with that special kind of buyer's remorse that comes from spending gobs of money on wonderful things that will make your life more beautiful and organized... only to realize just how much unpacking, assembling and general work now stands between you and that new, more beautiful life... sigh.   It's OK-- the beauty of Ikea is that our new bed will rest happily in its three flat-pack boxes until we get around to ripping up carpet, refinishing floors, and getting the room ready to house it.  Nothing like starting a major project to welcome the holiday season, right?

Wishing you a happy week, from our crazy family to yours!