A Heart Full of Gratitude

It seems appropriate that I would start Thanksgiving week with such a full heart. This weekend was a blur, but it was the best kind of blur.

Saturday, I spend the day cooking for Issa's friendsgiving at the studio and our own Thanksgiving yesterday. I wiped up the last of the flour just in time to get cleaned up to go chaperone our semi-formal with my forever date:

We really do make a night of it, and I love seeing our students all dressed up.

We came home Sunday morning and I started cooking until it was time to leave for the ballet. Those pictures are being held hostage on Issa's phone. We came home just in time for me to finish cooking our Thanksgiving!

This is a short week and then we head to Chicago! I can't wait!

My Sweet Girl

Issa is helping to teach two classes at the studio again this year. Her littles absolutely love her, and she loves them. For Thanksgiving, she wanted to make them a little something. Enter these cute guys:

 She spent hours hot-gluing all those feathers. But this is what melted my heart:

Bless her sweet soul...

A Hobby for Me

I posted this on facebook last Tuesday night:

I heard a piece in NPR this week talking in part about the importance of hobbies unrelated to a person’s career. Apparently the vast majority of Nobel prize winners have one. The thinking is the productive struggle and failure rewires the brain to be more resilient and more solutions-oriented. I started to use this reasoning to justify my new pottery obsession. Then I realized something more important: I don’t need a justification. Pottery—even my terribly lopsided, unpredictable pieces—brings me great joy, and we could all use a little more of that these days. My wish for each of you is that you find one great joy this week just for you—to feed your soul. And a huge thank you to Julie Berkowitz and Brad for helping me find this joy.

I returned to the studio again last night, and I felt it even more deeply.

Julie had an HOA meeting last night, so as soon as we were settled she left us alone--we three potters that tend to be there every Tuesday. The other two are far more skilled than I am, and we have very little in common outside of the studio. We stared at each other wide-eyed--like kids left alone in a candy store. Then we started doing what we always do: glazing, shaping, trying to decide what to try next. We missed our teacher, but we also learned that we know more than we thought.

The studio is always warm thanks to the kiln, and it is tucked into the woods, which adds to the cozy feeling. I realized, though, that I'm also finding community there. We don't talk much, but when we do it's genuine. They asked about my kids. One of us is getting ready to move, and we talked about that. The other is in a doc program, and she finally opened up a little bit about that. We talk about our pieces. And there is often a very comfortable silence where all you hear is the whir of the wheels.

I always leave feeling more centered, and I'm still incredibly grateful to have found this little studio and a hobby that brings me so much joy.

Music for my Soul

For a few years now, we have had season tickets to the ballet. This year, when we renewed our tickets, we also received tickets to go see the Chamber Orchestra of the Triangle. 

Our tickets happened to be for yesterday, and they were performing at the Carolina Theatre in Durham. The theatre itself is beautiful. It was originally built in the beaux arts style in the 1920s, and it was fully restored in the 1990s. Sitting amongst all the gilt and velvet listening to the orchestra was amazing.

They started with the William Tell Overture, moved onto a sung German piece of five unrequited love poems, and then ended with a French piece that reminded me a lot of Camelot. As I was listening to the soprano sing in a language I didn't understand, I couldn't help but cry. You didn't have to know the words to feel it so deeply. At that moment, I remembered that I need to do this more often. There is something so unbelievably moving and soul-feeding about a live orchestra. Watching the cellos and violins--the way they move with the music. The artistry of the conductor. The roll of the timpani. 

It's just pure magic, and I need to create space for it more often.

A Step Back in History

Last weekend, we were fortunate enough to meet Papa Don and Grandma Nancy in Williamsburg! Williamsburg is one of our very favorite places, and this time we were there in 1774, before the Revolution.

The first stop was of course the stocks:

 Pure trouble right there.

 Our whole trip was scheduled around this:

The noon cannon. Evan loves watching the cannon, and we learned a lot about the use of the cannon in non-war times--mostly as a lunch bell. Evan was a little sad there was no big mustering of the troops, but we were in 1774.

We loved wandering into each building a learning a little bit more about Colonial life. Thankfully my whole family appreciates my need to follow rabbits way down holes and indulged all of my question asking and sign reading. They only cut me off when I started reading archaeological dig reports aloud at lunch. (The tavern keeper really should not have told me about this treasure trove of historical tidbits.)

This was my favorite, though:

 We ate at three taverns in two days. I love these tavern meals because there is no rush. We got to talk and laugh. And there is just something about candlelight that changes everything. In fact, we have started a new ritual at our house where on the nights that we are not running somewhere after dinner: we turn off all the lights and eat by candlelight. We all slow down a little bit, and it just feels a little bit like magic in the air.

A super sweet gentleman offered to take our picture outside of the capital on the last day:

I will be forever grateful for this weekend. We are running at break-neck speed through November, so having a weekend away was such a gift. Spending it with people we don't get to see very often was just the icing on the cake.

He Did It!

Last night was a very big night for our boy! At most dojo graduations, your real test is behind you. Graduation is just a chance to show your skills and move up formally. Once you get to brown-black, however, it's very different. Since it is the last belt before black, your test really happens at graduation so all of the black belts can watch and decide if you are ready to move up. It is not unusual to have to test multiple times.

Evan went for his first test last night, and I think I was just as nervous as he was. He looked good! And he earned his brown-black belt:

 Here he is on his Dad's shoulders moving his intention stick one step closer to black:

I couldn't be more proud of not only how well he did but also his attitude going in. He had no delusions that this was a given. He was prepared to take feedback and try again. He was elated to earn that belt, though, and I it is not full-speed ahead towards black belt.

Soup Sunday

Every fall we recommit as a family to really loving and using the things we have. Maybe it's because the cooler temperatures push us inside. Maybe it's the holidays that have us pulling out special objects and lamenting that we don't use them often enough. I don't know. But I'm enjoying the recommitment.

Sunday, Brad spent a lot of time cleaning our the garage. We let go of some things as we are working to make that into some extra livable space--mostly for yoga and training.

As he was moving things about, he moved the fire pit up to our deck, and thus soup Sundays were born:

 I had already put squash soup in the crockpot, but he pulled down Mom's old soup crocks for us to use. They are heavy pottery with handles, do they work well out by the fire:

 As long as we can, we have committed to having soup around the fire every Sunday.

After dinner, Brad got that tell-tale look on his face. We were moving furniture:

 He has such a better sense of how we need to use space than I do, and every fall he switches something up. This year, we swapped the living room and the landing. We now have a cozy space for watching TV downstairs:

 And a table for gaming a puzzling upstairs:

The Legos are already up there, and now we have more room for projects and building. It's a good thing.

I do love this new arrangement, and I'm so grateful to be using the space better. Mostly, though, I just love the people I'm sharing the space with and the memories we are making.

Happy Halloween!

 I'm a little late posting, but we had a great Halloween!

The kids didn't have school on Thursday, so we packed it full! Our morning started with an appointment to get Issa her first passport. It is terribly unfair that her passport picture is actually good.

As soon as we finished there, we came home to finally carve our pumpkins. Evan's was so big we had to do it on the floor:

 Issa opted to paint rather than carve this year:

 And Evan enlisted her to do the sketch of his carving:

 I opted for a very traditional happy guy:

 Dad ended up helping Evan because his walls were so thick:

The end result was pretty amazing:

And Dad and Issa were very pleased by their new front porch decor:

This year, we went with another family costume. We all love the movie Totoro, and Totoro is always exactly the size he needs to be, so we were all Totoro in his various sizes:

 Those costumes were brilliant when we ordered them and it was 50 degrees outside. On Halloween, it was 80 and we were all melting.

They were my cutest trick-or-treaters:

 Every year Issa still does the math homework her second grade teacher gave her:

 It's all sorting and counting and adding and it's not Halloween if she doesn't do it.I just roll with it.

We watching the Nightmare Before Christmas with cold beverages instead of hot cocoa and listened to one of the most impressive thunderstorms I've ever seen to end our night. I would say it was a good one...