Day 18 Cleveland Ohio

I didn’t get to list the highlights of our time in South Bend yesterday, so I will do so here: visiting Notre Dame, Dora talking about how when she turns 18 she will go to a school like Notre Dame, Sebastian’s experience with the ducks (they nibbled his fingers), the way Dora just walked into the Dolan’s house and starting looking around, getting frozen custard with Aunt Pat and Uncle Jay, going to the Potawanami Zoo, seeing Matt’s old house in South Bend, and having lunch with Joan Crovello.

Now I am listening to Matt and our University of Puget Sound friend Christine Fuocco play together and it is SO beautiful. They played duets in college (she’s a pianist), but there is something so redeeming about hearing them together now. They have both been through a lot: health issues, injuries, difficult spiritual journeys, times when they couldn’t play. And the maturity that has come as a result of these experiences shows in their art. Christine said that they should play together again in 10 years and see what it is like, and I would love to be there and see what more God develops in them.

Christine’s husband Anthony is so taken with our children—they both love Dora and Sebastian, but Anthony seems to have a special connection with them (they both look at Anthony like he is the most fascinating thing they’ve ever seen!) and he just can’t get enough of their curiosity and innocence. It was fun to watch him playing with them.

Highlights of our time in Cleveland: talking with Christine during our trips to the store, eating pizza in the back yard as the sun was setting with the children at our feet, remiscing about our time at University of Puget Sound and catching up on the UPS gossip, talking to Julie Knerr on the phone (she told me about her family’s website), eating Panera’s Cinnamon Crunch Bagels for breakfast (my new favorite breakfast food!), and of course, listening to Matt and Christine play.