I am a new woman

I am feeling GREAT these days! i have a renewed sense of vigor, i'm feeling great about things, i'm loving the increase in birds to our neighborhood and our beautiful walks.  What a treasure this beautiful place I call "home" is.  We are getting a CRAZY early taste of summer here in the Pacific Northwest, particularly odd for us, this early.  Usually its JULY.  I'm lamenting not taking out summer clothes a month or two ago when i cleaned out our stored clothing stash for the kids, but gosh, i totally SHOULD have had another couple months to go! :)  NOT that i'm complaining..

Sharing some pics from our recent nature walks...

Beautiful little Bethie Grace and her cherry blossoms

The Neighborhood kids 

Elliott and his pretty flower

Oh and i'm trying to take up guitar.  Sigh... i have a good ear, perhaps TOO good, unfortunately, and sadly each time i strummed my sad attempt at a C# chord, it sounded different.  My experience learning guitar has thus been that my boobs are in the way and my fingers hurt.  Keeping it up though.  I'm convinced i can do it.  I'm going to blister those fingers and callous them up and make each C# sound the same!

Laughing at my failed attempts

I also painted this week for the first time in AGES.  I used liquid watercolor, the paintboard is what's in the background. it felt SO good... need to do this more. 

I feel entirely alone.  How is that possible? i have a packed house and 687 facebook friends.  As always i'm the queen of cognitive dissonance.  When will life make sense?  Can it just hurry up?  I'm tired of self destructing.

Veggie prep weekend

Whew, veggie prep weekend is always crazy busy.  Twice a month we get produce from bountiful baskets.    you should totally check it out, its amazingly inexpensive, and just generally awesome.  This time i bought i regular box $15,  1 organic box $25, one juicing bag $9 and a half gallon of coconut oil $20.   I think i like the getting one of each box, i initially was getting one or the other, usually the conventional because of cost, but i really like  the variety of getting both, like in our organic box there was LOTS of munchy fruit, apples, oranges, mangos, etc.  whereas there wasn't so much in the regular, but there was a greater variety of veggies.  My one hesistation with getting one of each is that sometimes we need 2 of a particular veggie, say of we are having cauliflower as a side.  then again, we could just add something else, like carrots, cauliflower and brocolli.  so i'm not going to worry about it.  here's SOME of our haul.  i put the coconut oil away and most of the conventional box was still in the box since i didn't have to chop it right away...

Next is the stuff i processed.  The 2 bags in the back are full of diced ginger, beets, a bunch each of Kale spinach etc.  they are for smoothies and are now frozen. Then i chopped up the organic tomatoes and the cucumbers and made the base for a tomato cucumber salad.  i still need to make the dressing for that.  Then i chopped up both watermelons and after munchie kiddos it perfectly fit into the other large glass bowl, woot! then i chopped the green peppers, and froze the ginormous carrots from the juicing pack, i'll add those to the smoothies when i make them, or maybe cook with honey and butter, we'll see, then chopped and bagged the broccoli, the rainbow carrots, the celery, one head diced and one cut into snack size peices, leaving a head of lettuce and 3 romaine hearts for salad later in the week and for burgers.  yay me! 

And these- i could NOT tell if they were zuchini or cucumbers.  i was THINKING that the top two were zuchini and the bottom cucumber, but after posting to facebook, i was told they are all cucumbers.  facebook is kind of awesome like that!  I guess i would have found out by chopping off the ends, anyway, if they were zuchini they would have been grated to make zuchini brownies, 

So anyway, that's my super exciting life ;-) cleaning and cooking.  woohooo!  

thanks for reading <3 R

Music

Music... good ones- kick back and enjoy..  Sing and dance with me!  I'm skipping the avery ones, because he's a butt. 

This one is so sexy... 

This one rocks.. 

This one is BEAUTIFUL! oh to sing like here...  i like my bluesy voice, but oh, to have a sweet voice... 

Hayden Pantierre-  She's an amazing vocalist.  And closer to my range.  That's it! we're moving to nashville...  yeah, i can rock this one! 

this one is fantastic... 

The wrooooong sooonggg.. yah! 

nice comfortable range on this one... 

love this... 

That's enough for today. I back to life.  

a rollercoaster

I'm on a rollercoaster...   bad day, great day, grieving laughing, spending too much time on facebook, drinking more than I should, reading to the kiddos, being a good mom, being impatient, fighting my demons, finding new demons, fighting those, thinking about my mom, thinking about Eric, thinking about thinking too much...

Music is cathartic.  If you need a musical hug, listen to this one- don't just listen, watch- the video is really good.

Perspective

Today a friend died.  Yesterday i posted this picture, referencing that it reminded me of Eric S.  a friend of ours.

I remembered him recently posting that quote to his caringbridge, or facebook or something, and it struck me as SO "Eric"   Looking at it now in retrospect, I think it was more than just a nice saying, it was probably true.  The last day he was alive or the first day he was in heaven...  Both are pretty special, right?   

I'm sitting here typing, bawling like a baby, trying to process the crazy mind vortex, as my new friend Hunter describes it, of all the thoughts flying around my mind popping from one to the next.   I remember the years we went to church together, the one Christmas eve where i was alone with the kids because andy had to work, and i ended up in the lobby with the twins, and Eric ended up in the lobby with Caanan, who is, i think a couple months older than the twins.  Anyway, we talked about stuff, life, work, (he was a stay at home parent like me).  He was one of those people who was so sincere.  So real, so CONTENT.  He always had a way of putting things into perspective, when i'd complain about something or other, but not in a mean way or a condescending way, you know like some people do, but just really sincerely he'd say something like, EVERY day is a good day, and then go on to explain why.  

I remember the first time i learned of his brain tumor was one summer that his family, my family, and his sister's wife's family were all at the spray park together and he mentioned it in passing and i was like, WHAT?  I guess his initial tumor which had happened before we started attending St. Lukes in 2001 had gone into remission before we met them at St. Lukes.   he wasn't supposed to survive that one either.  But he had- long enough to have 2 beautiful children with his lovely wife, Who my heart is so breaking for now.  She's so young, far too young to be a widow.  Its hard to tell which emotion is "winning" at this point, my grief for them, or my strange sense of joy for Eric.  

Why Joy? Because Eric is one of the FEW people I know that i can say for certain that he IS in heaven right now.  I wonder if he can see us.  I wonder if he'll be able to see the hordes of people that i'm sure will be at his funeral.   Its easy to be so happy for him to think back through what he's been through, and know that finally he's cured.  From these bodies of death that we all have to struggle through, he's finally FREE.  Free from the struggle of the flesh, of making hard choices, of choosing sin and seeing the repercussions of it.  The pain is gone.  His body is now perfect.  He won't hurt anymore, he won't cry anymore, everything will work exactly as it should.  I bet it IS his favorite day.

  

But i can't say its mine.  We love you Eric. Thanks for all that you taught us.   Will be giving you the biggest hug ever when we meet up with you, sometime soon! 

Heeeeey... hey hey! a beautiful day!

Yes, today was fun- so far, and it seems Andy is having a hard time getting monkey to sleep next door, but after a hellish day yesterday, in which i got my butt kicked, physically and emotionally by a certain autistic toddler who shall remain nameless, and who you'd NEVER know was being so foul today, as he's actiong like a perfect angel- THAT DAY, which at the end, i looked like this- (andy handed me a teddy bear, grabbed my ipod, and took a picture, hahaha.... )

Is thankfully over and is replaced by a very nice, pleasant day-  Alex is in Olympia all day at a convention thingy for mechanical engineers in which he and his engineering club have designed a car that they are entering in a competition, which he is amped about and required Andy to drive him to college at 6 am and come get him at 10 pm.  :)   I got out of that duty pretty fast :) i'll probably come with tonight though.   

As for the rest of us, Andy decided we were going to go swimming at the Y today, which i was initially reluctant about, but after i got over the initial dread of being seen in public in my swimsuit, i rememberd that i'm a self assured upper 30s aged woman and don't CARE what anyone thinks of my body, and went with it! Glad i did- it was SUPER fun.  we dropped the twins off in childcare... the amazing, blessed, beloved childcare, which meant it was just Andy and me, Nik-14, Chloe-12 Annabeth-9 and Leif-6 so the little kid micromanaging was to a minimum and i got to be a human in the pool! it was super fun, first we vegged out in the hot tub till i got a headache, then we went to the pool, and i was having the best time floating.   Just laying on my back and lightly flapping my feet and arms, and listening to the sounds of the pool, and just RELAXING, which is entirely foreign to me- my dr. at my last appt actually told me i need a massage :)  anyway, it was wonderful, we'll have to do that again soon!!  Then the girls and i found a family room and had a blast showering and giggling, so fun having girls.  <3   i plan to drag the hubs out of the house and make him go craft store shopping with me hopefully, while the kids do chores maybe... maybe we'll take ash?!  Anyway, off to continue the day.  Today things look brighter.  Thanking God for the occasional brighter day!!