It snowed across the bay last week, and it snowed a few miles north of us this afternoon, and it snowed up on the ridge in town this evening. Winter is coming; I am patiently waiting for her.
A friend kept the kids overnight and while my husband and I did get out for a fancy dinner, I think my favorite part was going to sleep at 9:30pm and then drinking my coffee in bed the next morning, watching both the sun rise and him taking photos of it from the balcony.
There will come a time when all three daughters and the husband will audition for the local Nutcracker, and they will make the cast and your heart will swell with pride to three times its normal size. That time has come.
Party dad, Mother Ginger dancer, Mother Ginger, and young Clara are coming to a dance stage in December. Everyone’s invited.
More exciting, perhaps, than my daughters auditioning for our town’s Nutcracker ballet tonight was that my husband auditioned for our town’s Nutcracker ballet tonight. Although he’s spent decades on stage as a musician, he’s never dabbled in dance or theater and his inner child has been looking forward to this since we attended the ballet last year. My favorite part of today: Chris driving all over town to secure a package of white t-shirts because he had to wear a white tee and black pants, per the packet…. only the packet was for the children, and Chris showed up to a gaggle of grown-ups in street clothes. He enjoyed himself nonetheless, and so we anxiously await the announcement of the cast list.
It’s now Christopher’s turn to leave town, and I must figure out the logistics of work and school pick-up and meet-the-teacher and pickleball and and and. My favorite moment thus far: teaching my class at the community college and looking out the window to find that my children have successfully walked across town to meet me, which included a stop for coffee on the way and a chat with my friends, who texted me my kiddos’ status and whereabouts. I LOVE THIS TOWN.
What my husband and children did not tell me, while I was away, was that they went to the shelter to return the borrowed cat items from last weekend and came home with another cat. This one shared a home with ours before she was surrendered, and apparently we needed to do the right thing and give them a reunion. Are we cat people meow?
I drove to Girdwood for a conference today, and the fall foliage moved me to happy tears more than once. Alaska is bigger and more expansively beautiful than can possibly be described or photographed. But still we try.
