September Sunshine

I feel like in recent years September is the new August.  So much sunshine, glorious temperatures, the kind of weather we wished for in June.  The tragedy of this blessing is that we've all been cooped up at our various schools, and swamped with the busyness of the work week, instead of outside soaking it up.  So, we've just had to squeeze in a September-summer's worth of enjoyment into our weekends!  Here on the first full day of fall, a look back at the last breaths of summer...

Labor Day lunch with family...

Beaching.  A minimum of once a week.  Mandatory with weather like this!

Ice Cream Social at Boulevard!  The glorious afternoon helped us to have one of the best turnouts ever.  Fun to see our school community gathered so vibrantly...

Meanwhile-- this girl now plays cello!  She's been over the moon excited about her new instrument, practicing dutifully every day.  Come to think of it, she's really rocking 4th grade overall, attacking her homework and her multiple extra-curriculars with impressive independence and maturity. This is interspersed with fits of irrational, moody argument, of course.  Good to have balance.

A night out at Mix for the 'rents.

And an afternoon of irreverent adult theater too!  (Book of Mormon with mom and Nat.  A memorable experience for sure, with surprisingly catchy music...)

Beach, again.  This little dog of ours!  She's become ball-obsessed.  She just. won't. stop going after that ball.  The further out in the waves the better.  Big waves?  No problem.  She dives right through them and keeps going.  She's totally awesome.

Quiet fall beachhouse.  The calm of the off season with the warm sand of summertime.  My favorite, really.

Managing to fit in some recreation around the homework, schoolwork, laundry and activities of the school week...

My new running group is my favorite. We run for beer.  5-6 miles these days, then time to chat at the brewery.  On this night three of us stayed for almost 2 hours talking about ALLL the things.  Nothing like sweating together for an hour every week to make a group of strangers into fast friends.

After a solid week of 80-plus temperatures and sunshine, with nary a moment to step out side in it... we finally made it  to Friday and gosh darn it, we were going to the lake.  It was surprisingly still and sultry even by the water, and we were regretting not bringing out suits...

But not long after, dots of heat lightning showed up along the cloudy horizon.  Followed by real lightning, and these amazing, rolling, roiling skies...

It was crazy beautiful.  The dramatic color palette of a storm, the brightness of the sand...

Then the wind gusted up and suddenly we were sprinting across the beach through a sandstorm as the rain began to spatter. My poor daughter was terrified, it turned out-- but I found it quite thrilling and breathtakingly beautiful, seeing  and feeling the approach of the front in real time..

It turned out to be a doozy of a storm, complete with a microburst that hit a neighborhood no more than a mile from our house, knocking down dozens of huge trees and leaving many of our friends without power for 5 days.  We got lucky this time.

Next morning-- back to sunshine for our fair city.  Had a nice time running in my first 5k for a while, with my friend Beth who needed a running buddy for this one.  I loved the course, winding along the Cuyahoga, back and forth over bridges, views of downtown and rowing teams and industrial flats all glowing in September morning light.

And a 9:30am free beer to celebrate was ok too.

Off to the VIllage Peddler craft fair in the afternoon.  Turns out this little girl is serious about craft fairs.  She could have stayed all day, I think.  But poor Jack had a cold and also no love for the craft fair... and we had another festival to get to because September needs a minimum of 4,000 festivals per weekend.

... so a sick boy went home to rest and we met friends at the Chalk Festival.  Life is always beautiful at the chalk festival.

So why not go both days? We chalked til our hearts content on Saturday before adjourning to our house for a lovely evening of dinner and Set with our friends, then went back just for our viewing pleasure, with Gram, on Sunday.

Some really amazing art this year...

No sleep til Brooklyn on the weekend of all festivals!  Straight from Chalking to Woofstock!

Winter always thinks its a good idea to meet great big new friends.  Til they want to sniff her back.

It is night miraculous that we did not come home with a second dog.

Here is Winter turning on the speed to go steal a ball thrown for another dog.  She did not turn on that same speed in the ring for her competition in Recall Races.  To her credit, I think her loss had less to do with speed and more with the fact that she saw no real reason to leave her new best friend, "the lady I met 12 seconds ago who walked me down here," in order to run back to me. 

Fast forward a (busy, hectic, soccer-and-homework-and-and-choir-and-chores-filled) week... another Friday, another trip to our lake...

Water was a bit nippy but we went for a swim anyways because we could.

Loving our city in the September sunshine! 

Air Show

 For people who say they don't care about the Air Show, we seem to take a lot of photos of it.  And organize a lot of our Labor Day weekend plans around it, just about every year.

Apparently finding places to watch the show for free is one of our family traditions.

Could be worse, I suppose.

 This year's venue was the Historic Coast Guard Station on Whiskey Island.

 It was Winter's first Air Show!  She found it a bit overwhelming, but I honestly think that was due more to the proximity to water and lots of new potential friends-- and being kept away from all of them!- than the noise of the planes. 

 Which were noisy!  And CLOSE when they would take their return pass right above our heads.  Didn't manage to get shots of that ever, because they always seemed to sneak up on us.

 Winter passed some of her time tackling several small children.

And because once isn't enough, we caught the Thunderbirds in action two days later, this time from the parking lot of Noble Beast brewing.  We were driving home from Lakewood when we heard them roar past, and drove through downtown looking for a good viewing location.

 Parked the car here just in time for this...

While I don't love the glorification of the military inherent in this flying troupe of war planes, or the fact that roaring jets might trigger a lot of PTSD for veterans and refugees... I have to say that I  personally rather enjoy the sensory experience of the Thunderbirds and Blue Angels.  The speed and precision of the flying, the display of awesome feats of engineering in action, the whole-body rumble of a close pass, the pasted-on perfect formations seen at a distance over the water.  On a blue-sky beautiful Cleveland afternoon, the noise and rush of the planes feels like a celebration to me. 

Especially when we get to see it for free.