Open Windows

Yesterday was the first official “open windows all over the house” day since spring. I’d been waiting for it: watching weekly weather forecasts, noting the occasional need for the heat to be turned on for early morning car rides to school; the occasional jackets being put on by my kids in the evening.

Like those little orange bellied robins signaling spring, those things, for me,  hint that autumn weather might truly come -- that we might really have that small spell of absolutely perfect days where everything is blazing and orange and red, and the light shining out from our windows as we drive into our driveway in the evening makes home look extra cozy and right, and we can all wear sweaters and jackets and zip-up hoodies if we want to, or just T-shirts if we don’t. Those days come in bits and pieces at first: Saturday was still 90 degrees, and next Saturday will be back into the 80s, but my first open window day came as perfectly as it could have with highs in the low 70s and gray clouds rolling and creeping across our mountains – threatening rain.

I am going to try to count down more often to small things like “open window” days. That’s a pretty happy way to go through life. Next? Maybe a count down to a day free enough of kid homework assignments and other obligations that we will have plenty of time to use our new candy-corn, bat and pumpkin shaped cookie cutters to make some serious sugar cookies. (And by serious, I do mean serious – you can’t possibly make a cookie shaped like a candy-corn and not frost it with orange, yellow AND white frosting.)

Here we all were out back on the evening before the cooler weather set in.

That extreme happiness you see on Penny’s face? It was absolutely not there all day. She had her first loose tooth hanging on by a thread and no manner of promises and reassurance could convince her that its loss would be anything other than pure and terrifying agony. These pictures were taken after it fell out – with out so much as a lick of agony I might add.              
“What? I can’t hear you. There’s a bean in my ear.”                       
I know exactly what Abe and Daisy are saying with those faces: “Good luck pushing us two full-grown kids through thick unmowed grass in this stroller with a completely flat tire”.