Happy Halloween!

Happy Halloween 2021! 

We were able to celebrate more fully this year than last, thanks to our "back to normal" world.  

Team costume at work! ( which was created beginning at 10:45 pm the night before, after singing a Brahms concert. Because that's just how October is this year.) I am so happy to be a part of this great team of teachers again this year.  I genuinely like and admire each one of them, and it feels good to be included in all the shenanigans.  One of these days I might even start eating lunch in the teacher's lounge with everyone...

Pumpkin carving with our friends.  My heart still yearns for those years when our little friend-family spent every single Friday night together- usually putting out a "leftover buffet" or ordering pizza and just enjoying the ease of being together.  The perfect thing for a Friday-- friends that you don't need to clean the house for.  As our kids grow up and our lives get busier, and with the distance between our homes, these comfortable, easy nights together are fewer and further between... so we have to treasure them more.  It felt great to hang out in the kitchen and talk and eat and drink and laugh, then share a tradition together.   

I take it as a personal mission to make Melinda laugh until she cries whenever we spend time together.  It's not hard to do. :)  This time-- is that a moon, or two butt-cheeks on a toilet seat???

These kids!  So grown up!  But I see their baby-faces in there, don't you? 

Doesn't everyone carve pumpkins in a get-up like this?

The trio carved "tiny faces" on the backs of their pumpkins, and have to have a photo "showing" those.  Never mind that the little pinprick eyes did not let out any light... :) 

Halloween Saturday:  Took advantage of the not-yet-raining morning to get out the vote.  Our local politics this fall have been more interesting than normal, with the election of Cleveland Heights' first actual mayor, 4 council seats plus one partial council term up for grabs, and a rather contentious school board race that involved a slate of three  hard working and progressive incumbents fighting the stigma of last year's teacher strike (because THAT happened in 2020, too!), a young and fresh-voiced African American making the (extremely valid!) point that representation matters (and dividing the democratic vote while he was at it), AND a slate of three right wing, anti-public education candidates preying on the fear of (even) higher taxes with the goal of expanding vouchers.  So, yeah.  Local politics really matter. 

(Spoiler alert... since I am writing this after the election I can give away the ending:  the good guys won.  For the most part.  We still have a majority white board, and that still needs to change.  But at least our schools are not in the hands of MAGA creeps.)

We took Gram to Target for some things and then headed back to our place to bake our traditional Halloween cookies.  Ivy did about 80% of the mixing, cutting and baking work this year.  Atta girl. 

We did our nails for the weekend, too.  First time trying "color street" and while I didn't do the best application job, it was festive to have Jack-o-lanterns on my fingertips. Might even try it again!

Halloween morning!  Five miles with my running friends to start the day off right. 

Then we enjoyed the silver lining of Zoom church-- multi-tasking!  Set up all the frosting insanity right there, along with our All Saints' Sunday candles, and  not only did we get the cookies done in an hour, but I got Nat and Ivy to participate in church for once!  Ivy even sang along  with most of (really great!) music.  Best church Sunday in a while.  I am most definitely looking forward to returning to in-person worship (maybe for Advent??) but there are some parts of distance church that I will miss...

By the time we finished church, the day had improved markedly.  Took a walk with Nat and the dog to enjoy our local park, finally looking like fall...

... and the blue sky just got better and better so we dragged our little homebodies to Lakeview where the cemetery was anything but creepy.  The trees, the light, the views, the sky- radiant. 

We even got the kids to legitimately have fun with silly family portait poses. 

Sometimes it just takes my breath away that we get to live down the street from all this. 

Nat and I made a quick jaunt to the lake after dropping kids off for a youth group meeting at church. 

Still beautiful there, but wow was it windy!

So much so that Nat got completely soaked while trying to get photos of the spray.  Never a dull moment for us!

Home for a quick dinner then time to costume up.  For the first time ever, neither of our kiddos trick or treated with us in the neighborhood.  We'd thought Jack might go off with friends but Ivy surprised us with a request to go to her new friend Izzy's neighborhood.  And we can't very well exhort her to make new friends at her new school, then not support her to spend time with them, so off she went. 

Our little mushroom elf.

At Izzy's house.  They also went with a third friend who was dressed as the rabbit from Monty Python and the Holy Grail. Sadly this girl is moving in Novermber, (Story of Ivy's life!) because I am fan of hers without even knowing her! 

This is a photo of Jack being delivered to Henry's house with a last minute Jedi costume ( because of course he only decided to go at around 4:30) and a pillow case for candy (because he's a teenager!)

Kid came home with about 10 pounds of candy so I think he's glad he went. 

Undaunted, Nat and I set out to enjoy one of our favorite holidays in our nieghborhood, with costumes and an attempt to pass out candy from our nicely decorated porch.  After having one visitor between 6 and 6:30, we left some candy on the steps and spent the rest of the evening with our nieghbor friends on Somerton.  Got to see allllll the trick or treaters AND drink wine with fun people, so it was a win overall.  Even if it was pretty strange to not be looking out for our own little ones in the crowd...

All those years of holding their hands, carrying their treat buckets, going just  a few houses and then a few more.  Those years of watching them run just ahead, clutching flashlights and looking back to check in.  Those years of letting them go ahead without us, but knowing we'd glimpse them around the next corner.... And suddenly we are here.  And it is as it should be... but this Halloween was one more way that my mid-forties are really hitting me hard.  My littles are no longer little, and time has whistled past me leaves in the October wind.  And I wish I'd enjoyed carrying my costume-clad toddlers and all their props, just a little more. ..