Sukkah love

 Lulu loves yoga with mama.

 They both love airplane; one of them is the pilot while the other is the plane.  Sometimes the pilot sneaks a kiss from the plane. Most of my home yoga sessions end up in a kid dogpile, which feels especially zen.

 Sweet, dreamy Lulu at the Emeryville pumpkin patch, watching her big brother in the jumpy house that she wasn't quite ready to attempt.

After a few super hot, summer-style fall days, during which Leeor made our family's first Sukkah for Sukkot, he flew east to spend some quality time with his BFF from NYU before he tied the knot.

I had to present at a conference in Arizona on my way to meet him, which was a little crazy, but I'm glad I did it.

 Leeor picked me up in Newark and we hit the road. It was a warm and sunny Friday in Connecticut and we wandered around the small town before the rehearsal dinner.

 We managed to pop into a toy store next to the wine bar and nabbed some little gifts for the kids.

 As of Friday night, I missed them, but we enjoyed ourselves; it happened to also be our anniversary weekend and it felt good to have some time together.  Leeor took his job as reader very seriously and actually memorized it Saturday morning. This guy, I'm telling you.  It's like he needs to constantly exercise his brain.

 After the wedding, we headed back to New York.  We discovered during the weekend that, in classic, "us" form, we were flying back at different times, on different airlines.  Then Leeor's flight was cancelled like a million times.  Mine remained on Monday afternoon, and with my man stuck at the airport, I headed to Park Slope to spend some quality time with my old NYC roommate and her darling family.

Leeor's flight was moved to Monday morning and he managed to get a hotel voucher; we spent our anniversary in the JFK Doubletree; we ate lukewarm burgers and fish n chips goodnaturedly.  We talked obsessively about the kids.  It had been too long, we decided.  Good to know but hard to tolerate. We spent a fitful night before he finally got on a plane at 7 and I headed back to Park Slope before I headed to Newark to catch my 3pm flight.  The plane couldn't fly fast enough and I was stuck with a center seat but soon enough my family was pulling up to the curb at SFO and I nearly inhaled them whole.  

***

While today is the official end of the high holidays with Simchat Torah, we definitely peaked with Sukkot and then petered out.  I am okay with that.  I'm sure god is too, or whatever being, if any, exists.  I liked practicing the rituals of the season this year, though, and who knows, we may even join a synagogue.

Flying over the Bay Area yesterday, I felt my heart surge and my feet settle into the floor.  California is my home; it's in my veins and where my babies were also born.  As much as I love the East coast, I can't imagine living anywhere else but here.