these days

things are going really well. life feels so easy these days. the kids and i are having a great time every day, and we've found a rythm of life that really seems to be working for all of us. sena's learning so much all the time, and homeschooling has been (mostly) fun and easy up to now. she's so interested in things, i feel like i don't need to do anything other than support her and be ready to provide guidance when she needs it. she wants to read and write every day, and she's also interested in learning everything from how the immune system works (she's been asking me about this every night for the past week), to why it snows in the winter, and so on.

aiyana's also catching on to a lot of stuff; she sees her sister writing, so now she really wants to write, and she asks me to write words for her, and then she traces them over. she can already recognize a few letters, and she loves to pretend she's a librarian, reading to the rest of us, before we go to bed at night.

the three of us have been walking some lately. it feels really good not to take the car everywhere. now, whenever it's nice outside, we try to go for a walk with the stroller. we usually end up at the cafe, which feels like a treat for all of us. i realized that i've been filling my car up every two to three weeks, and that feels nice, not to have to use so much gas.

so things are looking good. i feel great and have energy, so i've been really thinking of starting a little project of my own. i'd really like to cook for people, since i don't think there's any decent place to eat around here. there's the indian restaurant, and their food tastes delicious, but their ingredients are not the highest quality... anyway, i'd really like to cook extra when i cook for us, and share it with friends who are too busy or whatever to cook for themselves. i've already started doing it a bit, and i'm going to keep going and see how things go.

that's it for now,
peace

floating and faith

today is my first official day of bartering. i dropped my kids off at my friend's house this morning - my friend is having a kid event, where they're going to do felting, dress-up, water colors, and general outdoors play. sena was really excited about it, and aiyana got into it as soon as we arrived at my friend's house. instead of paying her, my friend and i agreed that i'd cook dinner for her family. so now, that i have a few hours to myself, i am just...floating. literally.
i'm on a wooden platform, floating on a small lake. i've been watching a small bug skip across the water. i'm surrounded by trees, water lilies, birds, dragonflies. it's silence all around, except for the wind and birds.

i was feeling melancholy this morning, after an intense dream i had last night, and the only thing i could think of to soothe me was this. so after dropping the kids off, i took a little path through the woods, which brought me to the place i am now. sitting here alone, in the sun, surrounded by this amazing everything definitely feels healing. in these surroundings, i feel that i can be who i am, that i can really let my heart be open, however crazy it may look like, and that will be ok. here, i feel accepted more than anywhwere else.

at our last women's circle, we talked about faith. not religious faith necessarily, although that was included, but faith in a broader sense, including hope and trust. so i've been thinking a lot about how faith fits into my life. i feel that i do have a lot of faith, although it's hard to define it. i guess overall, my faith takes the form of joy and a belief that things are good, that everything makes sense, or fits in somehow. it also takes the form of awe at how incredible life is, not just human life, but life in all its forms. i think faith is also reflected in how i feel before the unknown. when i let myself be and get out of my head and my narrow concepts, i feel something extravagant in me and around me, and that's got something to do with faith. finally, i realized today, that on the most practical level, my faith is about trusting in the power of love. trusting that love will untangle things, and resolve everything in my own life, as well as in the world at large.

what it feels like

last night, after we said goodnight, sena turned to me, and said, "mom, what does love feel like?".
i thought it was a really good question, and had to think about it. i asked her what it felt like for her, and she said that it felt like something bobbing up and down in the area of her heart. she said that she knows i love her, because she can feel my love coming into her body.
and she also said that love makes her feel like her body is all open and is about to burst like a volcano.
i was surprised at how much she wanted to talk about this, and how descriptive she was. she would've kept going, had ed not come into the room to say that it's 10 o'clock and we should go to sleep...

7 chicks

Our hen ended up having 7 chicks, including Lucky who survived thanks to Ed. She was sitting on 15 eggs, but 8 of them were not fertilized. Here are some pics of mama and the chicks. They are really cute, all fuzzy and stuff....

maybe this is Lucky? we're not sure...i hate to admit it, but they all kind of look the same....and none is particularly attached to ed...

peace

the hollow

one day last week we decided to go to mansfield hollow and spend some time by the lake. it was a gorgeous day, and i brought some snacks as well as a change of clothes. this was a good idea, since the kids got soaked, and then cold, so i was able to change them, and everyone was happy. we had our snacks and then sena and aiyana played in the sand on their own for a couple of hours. i did yoga and just sat nearby enjoying the beauty and solitude of the place. i could not believe how well things went and how much fun we had just doing nothing. i had no books, no games, nothing to entertain them with, and yet they entertained themselves playing with sand, water, rocks, grass, and other things they found laying around, for over 2 hours. i love being outside, and it's great that we live in a place whenre it's so easy to do stuff like this. here are some pics:

walking to the beach


a hug on the way


sena, making a nest in the sand, using dried grass


peace

Don Juan

how amazing is this fall! the trees are so beautiful right now, i can barely stand it. i don't even feel like taking pictures that's how beautiful they are... i just want to sit and look, just be here in this presence...

it's sunny, and the trees seem to be on fire. the birds are still chirping, and once in a while, geese fly overhead, honking. there's still plenty of fresh food in the garden; last night, we juiced some apples from our tree, and at the last minute, i threw a few parsley sprigs in. it was delicious. what a treat!

since we decided to go to Ixtlan, several people have mentioned a book by Carlos Castaneda, called "journey to ixtlan". i borrowed it from the library, and i'm about half-way through it already. i like it a lot, and want to share the following passage, which resonates:

"for you, the world is weird because if you're not bored with it you're at odds with it. for me the world is weird because it is stupendous, awsome, mysterious, unfathomable; my interest has been to convince you that you must assume responsibility for being here, in this marvelous world, in this marvelous desert, in this marvelous time. i wanted to convince you that you must learn to make every act count, since you are going to be here for only a short while, in fact, too short for witnessing all the marvels of it." (spoken by Don Juan, p107).

i'm drawn to this idea of taking responsibility for my life, and being aware of every act. Don Juan speaks of death as being our closest and wisest advisor, in the sense that if you keep death in focus, and if you live your life knowing that you're mortal, knowing that it may end at any moment, then your living and your being will take on a very different quality. i guess it comes down to not taking anything for granted, which of course, is very hard to do.

today though, with this gorgeous weather, i find it particularly easy to appreciate the beauty of life, and be grateful for it.

honey

ed, sena and aiyana did honey extraction yesterday. they got about 23lbs from our hive. enough to last us till springtime, i hope. thank you little bees!

chicks

our hen has been brooding for the past 3 weeks, and finally, yesterday, when i checked the coop in the morning, i saw that 3 out of her 15 eggs had already hatched. i went to the house for sena and aiyana, and together we watched two more chicks poke tiny beaks out of their eggs, trying to crack the shell and break out. by the end of the day, we had 5 chicks, but one wasn't doing so well, since he hadn't been able to break out of the shell completely, and he was stuck. also, the hen seemed to have abandoned him, so he was cold, and by the time ed brought him in the house, he seemed dead. but then ed revived him with some heat, and he started peeping. after a few hours of heat, ed put him back in with the hen, and he survived. we called him Lucky.

the kids and i really enjoyed watching the chicks hatch. i feel grateful that we can learn so much by seeing things like this in our back yard, instead of only through books.

here's Lucky warming up under ed's shirt, before going back to his mom in the coop:

birthday, etc

last week, we spent a beautiful morning at bakerwoods


on saturday, we celebrated aiyana's birthday with the family


sena was very helpful to aiyana in opening presents....


yesterday, aiyana went for a new look...


yesterday afternoon, we napped outside in the sun. what a treat!


peace

Happy Birthday Aiyana!

today is Aiyana's birthday.
it's very moving for me to think back to her birth, and all the changes that have taken place since then. it's been such an amazing journey, and i feel honored and overjoyed to have her and Sena in my life.

here are some pictures from her birth, October 5th 2005:

this is me, in labor under the apple tree, with my midwives by my side


and here is the first time sena met aiyana. it was about an hour after the birth, and sena was very excited; she loved aiyana's little toes...


aiyana was 1 day old here


and here she is now...


what a ride!

peace

the secret life...

i'm reading a book that's totally blowing me away: "the secret life of plants". i feel like it's clarifying so many things for me, making them come together simply and powerfuly. this book is about plants, animals, people, the soil, the universe and the intertwining ways in which we are all connected. it has added more to my understanding of God and Life than anything i've read in a long time. i strongly recommended it to anyone, because it's not just about plants, as the title might suggest, but about the soul of life.

this morning, laughing

aiyana was asking me about uncle Chris, if he'll be coming over this afternoon, and i said no, because he's working. then she thought a little and said "dada working, grampa working, uncle chris working...men are working". she continued "no women working".
i said "what do women do"? she said "stay home".
"what do they do at home?" i asked. she replied very sure of herself: "take naps and drive places".
that sums up, in her view, what i do. i kind of like it. i had to laugh.

a short while later, we were preparing to go out. it's a little chilly and windy today, cooler than it's been recently. sena was getting ready, and she asked me for a sweater. i gave her one, then she wanted another one, and a vest. when i acted surprised, she said "i have to be weather-tight". wheather-tight? where did she come up with that? i laughed so hard. i'm going to have to use it from now on. i love it. she said that she got it from one of her favorite books "children of the forest".

thanks to my girls for making me laugh so much today.

Mexico, here we come

bought plane tickets to Oaxaca, December 4th to January 20th. very exciting... now i'm just reading and doing research on stuff to do while we're there. the kids are excited too; we've been getting bilingual books out of the library (english-spanish) and we're all reading them, preping for the trip.