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These are two quotes that inspire me and cause me to do some deep thinking.

"Confront the dark parts of yourself, and work to banish them with illumination and forgiveness. Your willingness to wrestle with your demons will cause your angels to sing. Use the pain as fuel, as a reminder of your strength."-August Wilson

I try to do this. I feel like I have the "illumination" but struggle with the "forgiveness". I have always been incredibly confused as to how to go about forgiving onesself. I totally get that guilt serves no good purpose and we need to move on from our mistakes so that we can make room for new experiences. I get caught up in the whole karma thing. If I just say to myself" wow that was wrong of me, what a mistake, next time I will do better" should that really be enough? Does the universe think that is enough and my little karma slate gets the bad erased? Do I have to find some way to make amends? Do I need to do something equally good to break even? Is worrying about not having good karma a selfish way to look at ones mistakes? This confuses me because I try not to live my life for others. I obviously care if I do something that causes trouble for someone else, but I try not to worry about what other people think of me. So, what do you think? Is it enough to realize you made a mistake and agree to not make the same mistakes? Or, do you need to go farther with it?

" Knowing others is intellegence, knowing yourself is true wisdom. Mastering others is strength, mastering yourself is true power. If you realize that you have enough, you are truly rich."-Tao Te Ching
This one hits home for me this time of year. Everyone is buzzing with excitement about tax refunds and all too often about what we are getting with that money. America occasionally makes me sad. We talk constantly about how poor we are when we have food in the fridge, roof overhead, family by our side. We put an inordinate amount of stress on ourselves trying to "keep up with the jones' " We over buy for our kids, in essence, teaching them to over buy. We get embarassed we don't have money because we blew it on useless crap. Useless crap we had to buy to fill all the empty holes we have because we don't want to really look at ourselves. We don't want to examine too close the way we talk to our loved ones, how we bought our kids stuff to occupy them because it was easier then spending time with them, the way we talk about our friends, how we really feel about the people we choose to surround ourselves with, how we spend our money, or our time. Maybe we are making excuses for our behavior and their believeability depends on our not looking too close.The truth is, the more money we spend on plugging those holes the more we rob ourselves of true lasting happiness. It distracts us for awhile from the what we don't want to face, but eventually, inevitablely the shine wears off that pretty new bauble and we are left with the gaping hole again(and maybe a new pile of debt) Maybe we can all try to be brave this year and save that money for a family trip somewhere where there isn't t.v, video games or any of the other junk that distracts us from really looking at each other and interacting, or for a yoga class where we can learn to enjoy the peace that hides in each of us, or even just save it so the next time something breaks you have the money to fix and can save yourself some stress. I know it isn't easy to just save the money. Life is short and everyone wants to get the best out of it, but maybe the real you IS the best you can get out of life. I have really been wanting an iphone, but realized this was completely out of reach, so I settled my sights on the newest ipod touch and I have to say, I really hope I DON'T get it. I will feel rich if I can master myself and realize I have enough.

Bookapalooza (a direct effect of Snowapalooza)

I have been reading a lot lately. It started cause it was so flippin' snowy and cold outside! It has increased because of a list my Mother-in law found and posted on her live journal of the 100 best YA books for the feminist reader (thanks Ann!). I am hooked on these now! I love all these stories about strong, sassy ladies. Some of the ones I have been reading recently are Howl's Moving Castle, A Wrinkle in Time, Dealing with Dragons, The Golden Compass (just started), Alanna the First Adventure and The Hunger Games. They are all excellent books. That being said, my favorites were:

The Hunger Games- Some parts of this book are so vividly written that I could see this world and feel this girl's anguish. I am not one to shed tears, but the descriptions in this book had me tearing up . The main character, Katniss, is smart , independent and very resourceful.

Dealing with Dragons- The main character here is Princess Cimorene and I want to be like her. I love, love, love this character! She is no nonsense, witty, confident and altogether too charming. This book had me laughing out loud and looking for people to tell about it.

I am in the beginning parts of The Golden Compass but I can already tell Lyra is my kinda gal.

So, that is what I have been doing with my time in the tundra, how about you?

Learning Fun!

We are readers, so I am super excited about my 3 year old getting a jump start on learning to read. I have found a great tool to help us in that endeavor. It is Hooked on Phonic's for Pre-K.

It comes with 3 workbooks. The first deals in uppercase letters, the second one is lowercase letters and the last one works on letter sounds. There are also flashcards that work with the books and DVDs with fun letter games. For each step there is a poster where your kids can mark off their progress with stickers. For the parents there is a a guide book to give you ideas of how to successfully use the programAs you can see, my 3 year old really likes learning using this system so I thought I would share it for any of you who wanted to get a jump on reading!

A Poem

I like poetry and was thinking of posting a weekly poem. We will see if I stick to it or not . Oh look, here is one now!



You wanna snake and shake me and see what might fall out.

You approach and slowly snake and shake me all about.

I was the rigid frozen ice minding my only own, when I heard the raven caw

Along you came to snake and shake and make me promises, if only I would thaw.

You pulled me in and heated me through and through and through.

But,I am no fool, not the fool that would believe that you were true

After the shake you took my gold, baubles and my shine

You violated my body, stripped my spirit and my time

and when I was all used up and nothing left was worthwhile

you decided that my burden cramped your vastly imaginary style

Now my ice is melted right away, exposing all my latent fears

and I'm left here in this salty puddle that tastes suspiciously of tears

Snowapalooza Update

It wasn't a blizzard or anything worse than regular Michigan madness. This was not the ice planet Hoth-like day I had envisioned, but the boys had some fun on their snow day:

I managed to have a little fun too.

Snowapalooza 2011!!!!!

The news is blowing up about this! The weather guy on channel 4 was so pumped up last night he reminded me of those excitable dudes that sell stuff on t.v after 2 am. He couldn't even hide his excitement while discussing how people would be in danger if they tried to venture out. I imagined him thinking this in his head "If you bastards even step outside you'll be instant Popsicles, AWESOME!" I was totally pulled in! I have realized that I am still a little kid at heart. I can't wait to see what this snow storm is gonna look like.
I washed all our extra blankets, put batteries in all our flashlights, and stocked up on foods that don't need to be cooked. My hubby has even got the green light to work from home! I am imagining the ice planet Hoth here people, wouldn't that be awesome! I keep telling myself I live in Michigan and they always get the weather wrong, but I can't help but be excited about seeing an epic snow storm (as long as everyone stays safe, no collapsing roofs or anything!). I will let you know if the reality is as exciting as my imaginary snow storm.

p.s(for anyone who doesn't know what the ice planet Hoth is...shame on you)

Entertaining the Troops

For those of you who know me well I ask you now to try to think of words to describe me ( keep it G rated!). I bet no one came up with this one "outgoing". So, imagine my surprise when I discovered I love entertaining! I'm not talking stand-up here, which might even be a closer fit to my personality (I have a wicked sarcastic streak). I mean like Martha Stewart entertaining. It started with cooking. I really, really love to do this. Trouble came when I would have 2 or 3 kinds of leftovers in the fridge and multiple deserts hanging around the counters and my hubby complaining about his waistline expanding . So, I figured the problem was I didn't have enough people to eat all the food I wanted to make. I thought to myself, I could have more kids, but I would still have to gestate them, wait till they got teeth, and unless I am having multiple births I am still gonna have too much food. So instead, I poached some friends from my best friend, lured them all to my house by pretending I was gonna scrapbook and then attacked them with my foodapalooza! It was a brilliant plan. Although I knew I was going to have to bite the bullet and be all "hosty" , it would be worth the pain of being social. Here is the big surprise. I liked being all "hosty". Now, I don't use fine china (walmart brand paper plates!) or fancy place cards, but I manage to display the food pretty well! Since my first scrapbooking get together (which we didn't even get our scrapbook stuff out at) I have hosted Christmas Eve and another scrapbooking get together. I can't wait for my next one!