Of trees and prizes and wizards and rain...

A quiet weekend around here. My last day with students came and went with little fanfare.  It's a little strange to have one's "last day of school" be NOT on the real "last day."  It was a busy, crazy day with busy, hyper students and then it was over and I was on my way home and I kind of had to pinch myself to remember-- oh!  that's right!  I'm DONE teaching students!

Back to "work" tomorrow, in the form of waking obscenely early to be on a bus with fifty 8th graders heading off to Washington DC.  Wish me luck.  

Weekend recap, for posterity's sake:

Friday, we cut down some trees. 

 Three, to be precise, including the big one that used to cover the entire left side of the house as seen in the picture above.  Can't even tell it was there, can you?  A great tall silver maple, which we were at first sad to see go until we learned that many of it's large limbs were mostly hollow.  It needed to go.  We are excited to get a bit more sun in our front yard and high hopes for producing more than 6 tomatoes in our front garden.

Friday evening we went to the Boulevard Blast, the adorable annual festival at Jack's school (Jack and Ivy's school, soon!).  The kids LOVE the Boulevard Blast.  And what's not to love?  For starters, there's Hook a Prize, the exciting game of chance wherein you throw a line over this board and then pull back a prize, every time.   Every single time.  Best game of chance ever.  The brown paper bags are opened with eager anticipation:  will it be a few pencils and strange mouse shaped Christmas ornament?  Perhaps a ceramic pelican?  One of the ubiquitous pre-loved Beanie Babies?  Or, a ticket to trade in for one of the BIG prizes in a box behind the booth?  It doesn't matter.  They love them all.  All 47million pieces of junk that we brought back home with us.

It's worth waiting in line for.  Again and again.

 Jack begged for another punch card and stated that he was going to play "hook a prize" all night.  Then, out of the corner of his eye he saw the arc of a ball being thrown and handed his punch card to me, racing off to join in a round of that game where one kid throws the ball and all the other kids run and try to get it.  It is, apparently, the favorite game of a majority of the boys at Boulevard, from what I could see.  THAT'S what Jack spent the rest of the night doing.

Ivy and I visited each of the ticket-games at least twice where she dutifully tried her best and happily brandished her hard earned tickets. We also ate popsicles, climbed on giant truck-robots, and said hi to some friends.  And then played Hook-a-prize some more...

We had a lovely evening out in the summery-sunshine, seeing friends and neighbors, music thumping from a DJ, kids dashing everywhere.  The event was well attended and I was impressed, as always, by the genuine friendliness of all of the children there.  Happily playing and dancing and waiting in lines together, not a speck of meanness to be seen.

We love our school.

I went straight from the Blast to a Mama Speakeasy night, a wonderful laid back evening of drinks and conversation with my inspirational mama - friends.  Had to tear myself away to get home for bed a reasonable hour, as the Medina Half-Marathon was set to start at 6:45am on Saturday.

While it wasn't the best race of my life ( more walking than I would like to admit between miles 9 and 11) I was proud of my finish time (2:12:10) considering that we were running in 80% humidity on a course with a 250 foot elevation increase between miles 5 and 10.  It was brutal and I was in a complete stupor after finishing. Had to think really hard to lift my arm enough to pick up a donut .

Here I am once I regained enough coordination to take a selfie.  One does not have to get a new P.R. in each race in order to feel accomplished.

A quiet midday at home and then I hobbled my sore and tired self off to attend the sweetest birthday party for one of our friends' daughters.

Ruthie is turning 7 and into all things princess and doll-related and so the afternoon was a "doll  tea party" complete with bone china and a glitter paint craft.  Ivy was a bit overwhelmed by all of the boisterous big girls and was uncharacteristically quiet, but I think she had a nice time.

 Nat and Jack joined for the "after party" dinner and with a smaller group our kids relaxed and had a lovely time while the grown ups talked. We are so lucky to have so many intelligent, interesting, generous people in our lives.  I love our friends.

As we ate dinner, the line of thunderstorms rolled in.  Three rounds of downpours later, and the streets looked like this on the way home:

We decided to take a drive down MLK to check out the big puddles and the stream.  The kids had a blast watching the huge sprays of water as we drove through the soaked streets.

At MLK we were treated to quite a show.  Normally this is a quiet creek running a good 5 feet below the edge walls you see here.  In a few places it had breached the wall and water was rushing on the road.  It was very dramatic, beautiful and compelling that way destruction can be...

The rain continued unabated all night and we've had the fun of looking for water infiltration in various parts of our house.  We're better off than many friends and have avoided, so far, any full on flooding.  While the storms have subsided the rain has kept up, off and on, all day.  It did not inspire a trip to the lake, so we instead spent the day sleeping in and doing errands.  

Here we are making the most of a trip to the library...

The kids love this bridge.  An indoor space with an outdoor feel, it inspires footraces, tickle fights, and generally  merriment...

Look at this great big boy.  All of a sudden he's turning into a third grader.  He's been super sweet all weekend.  I'm a fan of 7 and three quarters.  It's a good age.

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This evening we had the dinner swap crew over for a dinner playdate wherein we offered a house to meet at and a leftover buffet.  For us, that's all it takes for make a party.  Have I mentioned I love our friends?  We don't have to clean or fuss or even prepare an actual meal and they will come and be wonderful and make for a fun night.  Plus, eight kids IS an instant party.  Tonight, thanks to Jack's (very) new obsession with wizarding (thanks, book we got from Hook-a-Prize), ALL the kids were donning capes and making wands and wanted to partake in wizarding school. So, here they are dutifully painting glitter glue (magic paint) onto tiny pinecones (dragon eggs) using "charmed" paintbrushes so they can use their eggs in potions later.

 Look at these faces.  They totally bought it.

(The wizard of the hour did not want to be photographed but here he is stalking off in his new wizard gear.  He cut the belt himself.  Earlier this afternoon he emerged from his room:  "Mom?  Do you know where there are some scissors? And, I'm gonna need my cloak."

Wizards at work.

 I love these children.

 Life is good here in rainy Cleveland Heights. I'm already looking forward to coming back to it on Wednesday night...

Three day weekend-ing

I do love a good three-day weekend.

Especially a three-day weekend full of fair weather, lake-days, a kid-free mini-vacation, horses, and playdates galore.

We've filled these three days up with a whole lot of wonderful.

Followed up our lake-night date with a lake-morning...

 How could we not?

 Nat and I thoroughly enjoyed our "mini-vacation," fitting in a resale, a bike ride, and two yard sales into our morning before meeting up with the family for take-out picnicking at Rocky River Beach. Dog madness!  Sunshine!  It was one of those days where it takes intense physical effort to pull yourself from the beach...
I managed somehow, so my mom and I could spend the afternoon shopping together, while Nat took these two home for a little bit of rest...

 Apparently an overnight at your Auntie's house (complete with hot tubbing!) plus playing at not one but two parks the next day will wear you out..

While at home, they also built a teepee.  Why not build a  teepee?

We closed out the day with a nice dinner with gram and some time playing tennis at Cain Park.  Jack has become extremely interested in tennis over the past week and, in his usual form, is picking it up quickly.  And asking to play (what seems like) every five minutes...

Sunday morning Ivy and I took a drive to North Olmsted to meet Missy, a horse Becca is training.  It was impressive to see Bec confidently working the horse and giving pointers to her owner.

 The owners daughters were the sweetest things, taking Ivy under their wing and showing her the ropes with Buddy, another horse they were working with that morning.

 Ivy had this shy little smile on the whole time and was super quiet.  She remarked to me later that she "was shy around all the new people" but that she didn't want to leave the horses.  I think I could have left her in that barn with those older girls for a few weeks and she wouldn't have missed me.  She told me on the way home that she wants to be a "master of horse riding" someday...

We had the most delightful lunch at a Dairy Queen on the way home, eating out on the patio and meeting a bunch of really cute toddlers who flocked to Ivy.   My girl.  She has a way with people.

Yesterday afternoon we were simply too busy enjoying life in our neighborhood to take any pictures.  Our friends from down the street were working on their house so the kids came down to play for a while.  It was great to have the littles riding back and forth to one another's houses, climbing into the treehouse, gathering to play on the patio.  

No sooner did Spencer and Andi leave, than Max and Sam came over, for a prearranged overnight.  A house full of enthusiastic, video-gaming boys.  Phew!  they ran and ran outside, then played and played inside.  We've been lucky with sleepovers so far in that the kids usually do go to sleep, right around their usual bedtime.  It doesn't hurt to have them be completely worn out by the time they get there....

Nat and the kids took Max and Sam back home this morning via the fabulous Beachwood Pool, where they officially opened the summer swimming season:

 I made myself stay home and clean the house, (which actually felt pretty good) before meeting up for a quick dinner swap and then an appointment at the Apple Store (hello new phone with a working headphone jack!) and then shopping at Trader Joes.  No sooner did we all get home and get the kids de-chlorinated than a trio of neighbor children showed up and took our kids away for almost an hour.  Nat and I sat on the porch and read and speculated as to where our children might be, exactly, and whether we should have established some ground rules, before determining that we really had no problem with the sweet 9 year old Rachel being in charge, and guessing that our two were most likely about 4 houses away on a fabulous tree-swing.

They appeared at home not long after, happy and sweaty and tired.  I am so excited to see them finding friends and freedom in our nieghborhood.  Ivy independently changed into her swimsuit and headed back for some water play, walking herself back to the corner all on her own.  Terrifying and exhilarating, to watch her walk off, so big and so confident and so lovely and so little, all at once...

They are so big, these two. But look!  We can all still fit in the hammock together, for one last bit of weekend before a short, busy week commences.  

Four days left in the classroom for me, a week of summer camp for Ivy, the second to last week of grade 2 for Jack....  I will try hard to enjoy it as much as I enjoyed these past three days of leisure.  I will try.

Last day...

Ivy finished her tenure at St. Paul's Cooperative Preschool today.

It seems impossible that this little one has changed from this...

to this...


So very very fast.

Here are some images from her last day.

See her sweet little friend Gabe?  Apparently he didn't quite realize until today that they would all be going to different places next year, and he took it pretty hard.  This sweet boy who wrote on Ivy's  group Valentine:  "She's special and I love her."  Heartbreaking.  Young love, so fleeting...

Also some images from a wonderful date night this evening.  Have I mentioned I love where I live?

Nat and I met for a walk at the lake after he took the kids to Becca's house....

Then, dinner at Barrio!  And margaritas!  At happy hour prices!  It rocked.

And then we went back to the lake.  Because my car was there.  And so was the sunset.

And the world's most wonderful dog.  Even if she does run off  and hang out with random picnickers just because they have salami and we don't...

We are looking ahead to a (somewhat) plan-free three day weekend.  Not sure where the road will take us for the next few days, but I am planning on enjoying it as much as I can...