Festivities

We've been far too busy getting festive around here to stop and write about it! Christmas is the only thing that could make me voluntarily triple my daily workload, I'll tell you that!  Between continued demands at work and then the additions of making photo books, working on cards, baking cookies, shopping, wrapping, and attending festive events...well, there's been little time for sleep, much less writing, or anything else. I can't complain, though.  These past three weeks have been full of lights and love, friends and family, snow and sunshine...  

 The day after Thanksgiving we got a jump start on the holidays with a visit to Glow.  While the displays were not as grand and breathtaking as years past, we enjoyed lights and crafting in the warmth of one of our favorite places.

 This is the best we're getting this year for a posed "tree shot" at Glow.  My children seem to have lost both the ability to dress up for holidays and to pose for pictures.  Good think I love them.

Also did a little more "rule breaking" and got out some Christmas decorations *gasp* before my birthday.  Our Christmas village is magical this year, and has expanded to include suburbs on the sideboard.  It may take over a whole room before long, and I am ok with that.

Our hearts were ready for Christmas but the weather in Cleveland was holding on to autumn.  We closed out our weekend enjoying sunshine at the lake..

 We also visited the "Holidays at the Hildebrandt" event for the first time.  A friend of mine owns this great old warehouse and is gradually turning it into an arts and small business cooperative.

My family treated me well for my birthday this year.  Special day breakfast from Nat to start my workday, and dinner and cake with the family for supper...

 Not only did Nat spoil me with an Apple watch, he also got us a new Playstation just so we could play Katamari for my "game night" party...

Which was awesome.  We had a terrific time sitting around our table, with all the leaves and extension in, laughing and gaming and carrying on for hours.  We know some really great people. 


Time to make some gifts at our friend's glass studio.



... and start the season with a West shore concert...

 ...and decorating the tree!

We also checked out "Wintertide at Gordon Square" for the first time.  Super cute little festival. I could have stayed all day listening to the "opera and strings" performance in the Little Arcade, supplemented with looking in all the little shops we walked by.  Our kids these days aren't the best companions at festivals, as they are too big to strap into conveyances and too young to appreciate much of anything, all at the same time...

They did enjoy a trolley ride, though.  We can always count on Lolly the Trolley for a good time.

 On our way home we helped Gram pick out and set up her live tree.  It was nice to give the kids the experience of visiting the (very authentic) tree lot without actually having to deal with a live tree in our home.

A little moment from Sunday at church.  Pastor Roger did the children's message and he had the children spellbound.  So fun to watch.

 Also Sunday:  Skating at Wade Oval.  The rink was snow-covered and rough and full of people, and Ivy managed to give herself blisters and we STILL had a lovely time.  I will remember skating with my children holding my hand, singing along to Christmas music. They are so big but still so little, these children.

 A shopping trip at Crocker park with my mom.  They do a great job with lights there.

 And, another treat-- Mix at the art museum with my honey and our friend Donna (who makes everything more fun!).  Being able to leave our kiddos home alone has opened up a whole new world of good times with grownups!  Balance in life is everything.

Two weeks out from Christmas and our neighborhood looks like this.  A strange, late fall that seems to still be going on.  We're going to have a leafy Christmas instead of a white one, I think.  Not all bad when it means warm walks to the park, playtime on swings, and even occasional blue sky.  Tradeoffs.

 Our friend Sarah hosted a great Cookie Exchange party this pas weekend and now our house is full of baked goods.  And if a house full of baked goods doesn't mean its Christmas, then I don't know what does.

These girls!  Too big to handle, and such friends.  Hiram friends, take two.  I love them so much.
(Ivy is wearing Mcgonegal costume glasses, not her own.  Though she is excited to get her own when it inevitably is time...)

 Our friend Craig ended up holding court with all of the young men, talking gaming and sports as the boys inched closer and gazed up at him. 

 Our friends are adorable AND fun.

 Will the baby-magnet.

And now-- let the week-before-Christmas wonder/insanity begin!

Gratitude

 Quick, before its Christmas!  Time to remember Thanksgiving.

It was a wonderful week, Thanksgiving week.   Started the week off with a little bit of single parenting, as Nat finished up his conference in Denver.  Silver linings to the busyness of that:  1.  I appreciate all that Nat does, so very much, and 2.  I got to go in to work late and take Ivy to school to see her class do their "capstone presentations" (powerpoints of their animal research).  Ivy was so excited to show her work, though she had some finishing touches to put on...

Isn't she the cutest??

 Also enjoyed our annual Thanksgiving Feast with my students.  Gratitude has been hard to come by with this group of kids this  year, but at least the room cleans up well.

 The Wednesday before the holiday found us baking and prepping and cooking all day. I was busy frosting cookies, so the kids made their own breakfast.  And even shared with me!

 We hosted some friends for the day...

 Good times with slime were counterbalanced by the tragedy of a hawk attack that took the life of our sweet Tiny, everyone's favorite chicken.  We had some very upset little girls who could not go on with their day before she was buried.
Here are Ivy and Naomi being pallbearers.  Using a shovel. A touching ceremony was held graveside, where the following verbal exchange was overheard:
Lillian:  That f**king hawk.
Nat and Ivy: *Shocked look*
Naomi: (deadpan)  Yep, she said it.

Lillian summed up our thoughts well.

We raised a cake pop in Tiny's honor.

 Thanksgiving!  We packed up our autumn theme cookies and headed south.

 Games with our Florida cousins (so great to see them!)

 And a full table (4 actually) of 28 family members and so much food.

 Relaxing all afternoon (no one does it better than Winnie-girl)

 ... and lots of family photos.  Pat's family:

 And Jean's:

 And the whole crew.  So much love.

 Winter is wagging her tail with gratitude for this day, which was smooth as silk and delicious and happy from start to finish. Who could ask for a better holiday?

Not content with one perfect Thanksgiving, we decided to have ourselves a second one the very next day.  Thanksgiving Redux at our our place was just as full of deliciousness and family and fun as the original version, with a new new cast:  Steve and his family, Melinda and Will and the girls, and Gram, who'd been feeling poorly the day before.

 Also one very good looking turkey.

 The kids' table...

 ... and the grownups.  Dinner for 14 was a success and a lot of fun.  It's been a while since we've hosted a sit-down dinner for a crowd.

 Not to mention that the weather was stunning. 

 As were the homemade pies...

 We seem to have added Yankee Swap to our list of Thanksgiving traditions.  Here's the crew enjoying their new treasures after all the swapping insanity.  The kids *really* get into Yankee Swap.

 These four girls were perfect together.  They played an entire round of wits and wagers all on their own while the grownups enjoyed drinks and conversation.  Living the dream, I tell you.

Feeling full of gratitude indeed for our blessings this year, too many to count.  What a gift to have this time off and these people to spend it with.  My heart is full.

Fleeting

In the past week, the foliage has come into peak color, brilliant reds and oranges popping out, startling against the grey of a November sky. Two days ago, we had our first snow, and winter-tinged winds have torn through the heights, raining leaves down into carpets of gold.   It feels as though autumn has just arrived and already it is in its denouement.  A fleeting season, this. 

Coyote sighting in Mayfield Cemetery.   

 Cold days and newly-early dark means a shift in our lives to more indoor pursuits...
Gatherings with friends, rearranging our furniture, getting back into felting and other hobbies.  In some ways it is welcome, being close to home and snuggling in instead of feeling so compelled to go and do and enjoy the great outdoors.

Not that we aren't getting out, though!  We've been rather focused on musical theater these past few weeks, it turns out.  Last week we had just the most terrific time going to the Heights High musical, Mary Poppins.  Our good friends have a 4th grader who was singing with the Boulevard Honor Choir so we went and sat with them to support her.  We soon discovered we knew MANY of the children performing-  and it was such fun to see them up on stage, to smile and celebrate with their families as we left, to revel in the talent and creativity at work in our schools and community.  Eleven years into our lives here in the Heights, we are finding ourselves more and more invested in the community as a whole, knowing people everywhere we go, watching children grow up.  Hugging a whole passel of little ones I know and love at intermission, I felt so much joy at being a part of this little enclave of 44118, so proud of the work being done here, and so grateful to love where I live so much.   Really glad we went to see the musical, it turns out.

 After a few weeks of some really November-y weather, this weekend brought the sun. So we went to the lake.

 It's been a delightful weekend, actually.  A bit of stretched out time in the midst of this fleeting season.  I think it was all because of the magic that is an afternoon off of work.  We had parent teacher conferences this week and our "payment" for two nights on duty til 8pm, was the chance to leave at 11:30 on a Friday. To add an extra layer of awesome, I didn't even have any conferences in the morning that day, just several hours of quiet, productive time in my classroom.  Then home!  Nat and I went out to lunch, had coffee and travel brainstorming at the Art Museum, and walked the dog all before picking Ivy up from school.  Took the kids shopping for some new clothes and shoes at Kohl's (they just keep growing, those two!) and actually managed to have a nice time, even in an environment that usually stresses me out. What a difference, to have a day off from students!  Without them sapping all of my energy and patience, I had some left to give to my own children... imagine that!  I took Ivy to a much-anticipated birthday party sleepover with a new friend from school (a lovely family- we are so glad they've joined our Boulevard community!) Then we spent our the rest of our Friday evening rearranging furniture in our living room and dining room (isn't that what YOU do on Friday nights??), flipping the two rooms for the season to have the couch in same room as the fireplace. Our good friend Mike came over to keep us company while we drank beer and moved heavy things and rolled rugs and cleaned out strange collections of items and a lot of dust from hidden corners of our room.  And you know what?  It really was a pretty great Friday night.

The rest of weekend followed suit, stretching out wide enough to hold all the things-- some cleaning, some relaxing, two visits to the lake, afternoon coffee-drinking, lots of driving around town, two estate sales, Second Sunday Soup, dinner swap, and a really terrific date night on Saturday.  I'm not sure how it happened, considering just how busy and hectic most of our weekends end up... but I could get used to weekend that feel like this one.
Saturday night magic, compliments of my mom (who hosted Ivy for her second sleepover of the weekend!) and Tiffany (who hosted Jack for a fun a great overnight with his friend).

Nat and I got to dress up (any excuse for rhinestones and a vintage coat!), go out to dinner, see a terrific performance of one of my all-time favorite musicals, and even have a beer at Noble Beast on the way home. We felt like real grown ups.

Today, back to real life.  The next few weeks promise to be back to our hectic norm, as Nat and I both prepare for time out of town at conferences, and all the cooking and travel and family of Thanksgiving week just ahead. Around us the leaves are drifting down and the trees are turning their November grey.  I am grateful for a lovely weekend and these lovely colors to carry me through.