The Next Decade

Kelvin turned 40 yesterday!

He celebrated with his family earlier in the month when he was *home* for a conference.

He and I have booked an adults-only getaway to Seattle later in October to celebrate as we usually do "experiences" rather than gifts (but I did give him some new copper mugs for his Moscow Mules since the kids have co-opted his old ones). I asked him if he'd like to do anything local to ring in the decade, and he opted to celebrate at a local winery with the invitation being vague about the "decade" but reading, 

"Kelvin would like to celebrate a Milestone Birthday with his favorite people! Please join us for wine, snacks, and fellowship at Septentrio after work or before bedtime on his actual big day!  There are food trucks on site if dinner is desired.  Please leave your small hooligans at home-- we are excited to enjoy rare adults-only time!  No gifts, please; he'll just return them anyway."

Cila watched our boys after soccer practice, and we connected with many of our favorite local people-- some from work and some from outside.

                                                                

With my fellow "mom" friends Jenna and Kellie

Sean, Josh, Kay, Mark

(Shannon, Sara, Brenda, Sarah, Tito, Sarah, Mandy, Sam)

Kelvin really does return a lot of gifts. Sara/Brenda got him these very unique and non-re-giftable socks featuring their faces! He also got some gift cards and charitable donations in his honor.

The after-party (circa 8:15 p.m., after which the party of old folks disbanded)! 

Here's to my husband joining me in middle age!

"Old Enough"

The rest of your life (as parents) starts....

when your kids can make their own lunches! 

Niall has been really *into* doing his own thing in the kitchen lately-- including getting snacks, preparing toast with peanut butter (for a "lunch"), etc.!  It's super awesome to see. There is a lot of evidence that American parents "hover" and "overparent" too much, doing things for our kids that they can obviously do themselves, either to be "attentive" or because we are perfectionists with our own anxieties about efficiency, messes, etc. The Japanese show on Netflix "Old Enough" has helped us as well as our kids figure out all the amazing things that our young kids are capable of doing... if we'd just let go a bit! 

Now, if only we can convince this kid that it would be great to go to the bathroom (AND WIPE!) independently.... sigh. 

Marsh Meet

Iver may have caught the running bug! He's been participating in "running club" at school and competed in the duathlon a couple of weeks back. However, this week, he participated in his first county cross-country meet, held at the Arcata Marsh.

It was a lovely sunny day, and, although the parking was horrendous, I made it on time to meet Iver and his teammates at the starting line (his coach gave him a ride from school in her minivan) to watch the race.

  Warming up

The kinder-second graders went first in a 0.7-mile loop, and it was really fun to cheer on the kiddos!  Iver stayed with the pack and sped up at the end, like he did in his previous race (he told me later, "There was a girl running faster than me but crying. No way was I going to finish behind a crying girl!").

The start (after one false start)

Good running form in the home stretch!

Iver finished in a time of 5:44, which was in seventh place overall (three boys and three girls crossed the line in front of him out of seventy one runners), and very respectable for his first running season!  The results are posted here, and if you scroll down, there's another picture of Iver and his teammates, who all finished strong, cheered for one another, and got stickers and popsicles after their races.

 

Iver is interested in doing more races (even competing with the third-fifth graders in their longer events!) and we'll probably participate in at least a couple of meets this fall, juggling the soccer practices and games to which he has also committed.  He seems motivated for progress, not perfection, which is what I am happy to see!  Lace 'em up! 

Arcata Acrobatics

We really enjoyed a family outing to see the Flynn Creek Circus in 2021, one of our first and only public events during the pandemic.  The company returned under the Big Top this year to Arcata, and a couple of weekends ago when Kelvin was out of town, I took the kids one afternoon.

They were entranced most by the snacks (popcorn/cotton candy) but also enjoyed the flight-themed acts and acrobatics, including aerial silks, balloons, and more (sword-swallowing is always a hit!).

(The kids took these photos. I asked them to get closer to the stage, as we were seated on garden bench, but they just "zoomed in"!).

This weekend, Kelvin watched the kids for a bit on Saturday eve while I attended my pumpkin dahlia arranging event.  After Iver had been at Hudson's the whole afternoon, Hudson joined our boys for Fro-yo on the plaza...

... and then some cartwheels! 

I love this (albeit foggy and blurry) action picture of the boys!

Pumpkin Dahlias

 

 

I hadn't participated in any "girls’ nights" (social events) in some time. On Saturday night, Kay (ban expert flower arranger) invited some women to her house to stuff pumpkins with some of the enchanting dahlias from her yard.  We had tea, snacks, and a fun time connecting.

Sweet tiny garden box strawberry

We scooped out the pumpkins, then arranged greens and flowers into mason jars in their centers. 

Peggy and Heather had participated last year, but it was new for Jenna, Susana and myself.

I am about the least crafty person out there (and probably the least knowledgeable about all things plants!) but it was a fun, very relaxing evening, and I have a beautiful fall-themed arrangement on my counter, until the flowers die off (as all plants in my care do, promptly!). 

Fieldbrook Enchanted Forest

 

On Saturday afternoon, we made a trip to Fieldbrook Winery to celebrate the Art & Wine festival, which benefits the town's educational foundation and schoolchildren.  Iver was at Hudson's house, so we had just one child with us. It was WARM out there (N and I were definitely too warmly dressed), and we ran into many people we know (including some patients!) while we enjoyed the scenery, artisanal booths, and food including barbequed albacore and oysters.

Kelvin's patient Mark lives on a family property across the street, near the field where the cars were parked, and, after running into us, offered to take us on a private tour of the secret "Enchanted Forest" which his cousin's husband built for their family.  Niall was intrigued!

We never quite made it to the "walk-through" tree, as Mark got a bit disoriented. Niall, a bit scared by various animal droppings (bear, elk, deer) deeper in the woods and fearing we were actually lost, wanted to turn around and head home.   However, how fun it was to visit a "secret" forest (brother, who loves things like this, certainly missed out!).

Helen Keller Pepper

Pepper, our twelve-year-old pup, has been showing signs of aging/slowing down from some time. While she used to freak out at the sound of the smoke alarms in our house (set off usually by my cooking!), she now seems to be almost entirely deaf, not hearing us when we return home through the front door and acting startled when she gets touched.

We've noted her eyes getting milkier in the last few months and her vision going (I hesitate to diagnose my dog, as I've tried to do in the past; however, I fear this is probably cataracts, a side effect of chronic prednisone). This week, it seems like she's become almost completely blind. She stumbles around on walks outdoors (especially in darker hours), bumps into furniture, and misses steps, curbs, and more. Her heightened sense of smell leads her to almost constantly digging and rummaging in various bags and baskets around our house. Maybe since she's familiar with her home environment, she is still able to navigate around the furniture and onto her preferred couch "perch." However, I can't help but wonder what kind of quality of life this gives her. She doesn't seem to be in pain, and still enjoys cuddles and licks (and snacks). 

I have an appointment with the vet in a couple of weeks to ask them what this new loss of sight means for the last years of her life. Is cataract surgery a *thing* in dogs of her age, and at what cost might it be worth it?  These are tough questions -- if your dog isn't in pain but is losing their senses and connection with the world, when and how does one make the decision to let her go?  For now, we're trying to take lots of pictures of our fur-child and relish all the good times and memories over the last decade+. 

Fed Fan Forever

On the heels of Serena Williams' retirement came Roger Federer's announcement (last week) that he, too, would hang up his tennis shoes after a few Laver Cup matches, never to play again in a Grand Slam tournament.

While his retirement was not unexpected (he has had surgeries and has been off the tour for much of the last couple of seasons so I wondered if we'd ever see him again), it was still a sad thing to hear his announcement in its finality.

I love Roger Federer. Not only is he arguably the best tennis player of all time (I loved watching him play much more than I did Serena), he was classy, graceful, and always the ultimate sportsman in victory, defeat and also off the court.  His shot-making was brilliant (even as I watched more of him in the twilight of his career), and had it not been for the contemporaries and contestants for the "GOAT" (greatest of all-time) men's title (including Nadal and Djokovic), he may have very well won several more majors.  It's incredible that he performed at as high level as he did until forty, and that he maintained such warm relationships with others (rivals) on the tour. 

I am still thrilled at remembering watching his come-from-behind unlikely victory (and last Grand Slam won, his twentieth) against Nadal at the 2018 Australian Open and still disappointed in his heartbreaker of a defeat in the 2019 Wimbledon Final against Djokovic.  We were lucky enough to see Federer play in person (a dream of mine!) along with other Grand Slam champions at Indian Wells in 2019, and my sister-in-law, Katherine, stood in line and scored me an autograph in 2017, a year we missed watching him play due to a walkover, which I treasure even more now!

How lucky we have been to witness so many of the all-time tennis greats flourish over the past two decades. The legacy of Federer, a wonderful man and person (and father of four), will continue to inspire tennis players for years to come. While the "next generation" seems to have some big name talent as well, I don't know if we'll ever witness a player as classy and talented as this one. I will forever be a Fed Fan!