Halloween

On a boat

Today Brixton and I had a rainy adventure. 

We took the bus downtown to visit a friend of mine who has been working and living at the Center for Wooden Boats. We've hung out during his time in Seattle but at my house or going to plays, never with the boat. He's moving to NYC in less than a week, however, so rain or no rain, we were determined. 

There's a lot of development happening in this part of town. We saw the facade of an old building, with sky and space peeking though, and watched a back hoe for a while. 

The Center for Wooden Boats- isn't it sweet? They are very dedicated to preserving the historical boats themselves, as well as the skills to maintain and sail them. I've never felt strongly about boats one way or the other, I've had some fun boat rides but never been really passionate about them. But these are really beautiful and well crafted, and I can see how someone could get wrapped up in it. 

There was a group of school children out paddling. Gotta love Seattle kids.

Me and Stefan. I'm going to miss my theater, boating, bookish, Quaker friend. 

The weekend was full of origami and castle blocks. We did some preparations for Halloween. Unity had a gymnastics meet and Brixton and I stayed home and took pictures of each other. Unity's team came in first, so she was excited about that.

Chris and I had one of those talks on Friday night that started out about one thing and ended up all over the place. When it was done, I said I felt like we just had a staff meeting about our family. Which is true sometimes you just need to get on the same page with things.  I think we have figured out some things, about schedules and snacks and the house, at least for now.

Portrait of today

We grew those beauties in the garden this summer. They are sweet meat squash, a type of hubbard. Two plants only produced those three squash but they are big. I'm roasting one right now and it took my a while to cut it up and scrape it out. I'm really looking forward to squash soup though, it's one of my favorite fall dinners. 

It's the season of curling up with cookbooks and trying to figure out which sock pattern to knit. It's the season of spelling lists in the morning and math problems at night. It's putting on sweaters in the foggy morning and t-shirts in the sunny afternoons. 

I've been realizing that our family has firmly moved into the elementary school stage of life. It's confusing because Brixton is still in preschool. But we really are pretty much done with the preschool stage of potty training and learning to hold a pencil, and have moved into the carpool shuffling to activities stage, which is so fun and fulfilling for parents. I mean, I am glad and grateful that they have passions to pursue, that we have the means to support them in that. I am. 

It's just the constant driving around that starts to get to me. 

I'm trying to find a balance with our calendar, that leaves room for family time and down time and also has space for all four of us to pursue at least one thing that's important to us. For Unity, it's gymnastics. For Brixton, it's drums. For Chris, it's his volunteer work for the local radio station. For me, it's my exercise classes at the Y, and my committee work at our Quaker Meeting. Sometimes it seems insane to think that we can all do our individual projects and still have time to be together. And some weeks are better than others, but we really try to say no to some things to create those pockets of down time. And we are still able to eat dinner together nearly every night, which is a priority to me. 

And I want to leave room in our lives for big picture stuff. For remembering and making room for things outside our privileged busy family. Whether it's bringing a meal to a family who just adopted a child, or going to a community meeting, or donating to an organization doing good work. At the end of the day, it all matters. The big stuff and the little stuff, the routines and the unusual. The pages in my planner that add up to our week, our season right now, the shape of our lives in the world.  

Finally finished

While on our East Coast trip, I was able to finish a project I've been working on since February. Yes, really. Of course I haven't been consistently working on it that long, there were a few points where I made mistakes and had to rip them out and then take a break for a while. But, here it is, blocked and complete. It was a challenge for me, for sure, but I learned a lot about lace knitting so that's a win. The pattern is Follow Your Arrow by Ysolda and it had a choose your own adventure aspect to it that was really fun. 

Hmm...what to knit next?

Wild things

        Brixton had a Wild Things themed birthday party. My mom made tons of amazing decorations, including the front door sign and the Max cut-out. Unity helped a lot with the art and made each kid a decorated name tag.
 The highlight of the party for me was Brixton reading the book to all his friends- he was really proud and it was sweet how they all settled down to listen. We had a good collection of people from many areas of our life-it was fun to get them all together for a rumpus.

Family time

My parents just left and we already miss them so much. We had such a great visit with lots of reading and drawing and just hanging out with the grandparents. 

Brixton was able to share his new reading skills and we continued the family tradition of marking his height on the wall. Chris forgot what year it was so it's a little messy but it's still there- man, they grow!

We stumbled across a collection of antique fire engines in Ballard and the owner was nice enough to give us a tour of his warehouse. It was pretty amazing to see the old engines and all in pristine condition.

We are so thankful that they got to help us celebrate Brixton's birthday and we are looking forward to the next time when we can be together again.

Happy Birthday Brixton!

This guy. Our superhero storyteller. Our dynamic drummer. Our builder of towers, our all day snuggler. And, he's five. Happy Birthday Brixton Marcel.