Heart Smiles

It's pretty much the best thing ever when you hear your children say from another room "oh my gosh, I love this song! It's 'Let's Get it On' by Marvin Gaye!" 

They makes my heart smile. 

There have been a lot of "heart smiles" for me lately.

I had a beautiful birthday last week, celebrating my 32 trips around the sun.

The day started with my favorite avocado toast and relaxing family time.

There were gifts, and flowers, and a vegan chocolate cake that I didn't make.

It was pretty perfect.

My sweet friend found this quote on pinterest that I had pinned awhile ago - one of my favorites and she wrote it out for me on a little wooden mason jar.

I love a personalized gift and this one inspires me to love the way I already do ... but better, and continually. No matter what life brings me - from tearful days to dancing days ... my

mission is to love others the way that the Father loves me. I think that's my only wish for this next year - to love in color. 

How about this cute little cup? You probably can't make it out but the words inside say "Hey Ewe."

It makes me smile every morning.

There was delicious black bean and veggie goodness.

I don't think I will ever tire of a burrito - I think they are pretty much the perfect food.

If love and goodness and color and flavor could all be packaged up,

it would be in the shape of a burrito.

I guarantee it.

I also can't leave out this gorgeous aspen leaf necklace. 

I don't know how I feel about people giving off "aura's" - but if we do, I think mine is green, with glints of gold that radiate out and branch off into twigs of white with dark smudges. I think my soul has the sound of leaves softly dancing on cool evenings like tonight. That's who I think I am. 

It makes me happy, and my sweet friend put happy tears in my eyes with such a thoughtful token of love. 

I also haven't been completely neglecting the left side of my brain - I did paint this little scene the other day. It's different then what I normally do but I like the way it fits into our home.

My favorite part of working on it was learning to blend and add texture. The paint had to go on  pretty thick since I was using an old painting someone had donated to the thrift store. 

Creativity does make my heart smile though.

Unless I'm uptight.

If I'm uptight a paintbrush better stay clear.

As for this evening, my little are having an impromptu monster party in the basement.

Sounds of them laughing and dancing to the Jackson 5 is floating up the stairs,

my ears buzz with gratitude for their simple complicated good hearts.

My job as their mama is simple tonight. Create yummy snacks,

listen to silly monster names 

laugh at their masked faces

and allow my heart to soak up this moment.

Have a blessed weekend my friends...

I wish you many moments of light and happiness. 

I wish for you many "heart smiles" and a very happy first day of October tomorrow.

Let's

Let's hold on to each other my little ones.

Let's adventure together,

Let's breathe in deeply

puffed out chests and noses upward drinking in the air

Let's go.

Let's look up,

way way up.

Let's find the sun, watch the racing clouds, dream climb 

Let's go.

Race ya.

My little loves,

let's feel what's around us.

Touch the bark of the trees, let sticky sap glue your fingers together,

let's sew with pine needles and braid the green strands together,

Let's feel the movements of the earth, of the air. 

Let's dance my little ones. 

Let's hold hands and trudge through hot sand and just dance

Let's dance with toes and legs and hips and spines and arms

Let's dance with smiles

Allow us to be thankful

Let's give thanks my little love, my squirrel, koala and bug.

We live in such an inspiring world

Let's give thanks by dancing, feeling, seeing 

My Beauties...

Let's give thanks.

Let's love each other, my babies

Let's be others focused and not self absorbed

Let's love big

Outstretched arms, giving hearts, generous with our praise 

Can we love?

Let's celebrate 

Let's celebrate rippling creeks winding their way out of a dark cold hidden caverns,

 twisting and turning and reaching light.

 Let's celebrate water, let's celebrate change. 

Let's push through the darkness.

Let's praise the Light.

Oh my love,

you are forever mine.

Let's be together forever.

Let's always explore the earth, together

You in your meticulous, quiet observant way

Me in my laughing twirling way.

Let's absorb eachother's energy

Let's not take it for granted

Let's be together forever, my love.

Let's be still my littles, my love, myself.

Let's just be still.

Let's see and feel and explore and dance and love and then...

 let's be still

“Feel your emotions,
Live true your passions,
Keep still your mind.” 
― Geoffrey M. Gluckman

Go outside. Don’t tell anyone and don’t bring your phone. Start walking and keep walking until you no longer know the road like the palm of your hand, because we walk the same roads day in and day out, to the bus and back home and we cease to see. We walk in our sleep and teach our muscles to work without thinking and I dare you to walk where you have not yet walked and I dare you to notice. Don’t try to get anything out of it, because you won’t. Don’t try to make use of it, because you can’t. And that’s the point. Just walk, see, sit down if you like. And be. Just be, whatever you are with whatever you have, and realise that that is enough to be happy. 
There’s a whole world out there, right outside your window. You’d be a fool to miss it.” 
― Charlotte Eriksson

Let's walk my littles

Let's appreciate art, textures...fabrics.

Can we stop the car? Oh please?

Let's stop the car, 

at unexpected places,

 and take pictures of other people's blessings.

Let's thank God for their blessings and make them our own.

I will forever have a red barn with a yard full of pumpkins framed in sunflowers.

Thank You.

Let's skip rocks bug, 

let's collect unnoticed treasure.

Let's delight in the ordinary that is extraordinary.

“I’ll tell you another secret, this one for your own good. You may think the past has something to tell you. You may think that you should listen, should strain to make out its whispers, should bend over backward, stoop down low to hear its voice breathed up from the ground, from the dead places. You may think there’s something in it for you, something to understand or make sense of.
But I know the truth: I know from the nights of Coldness. I know the past will drag you backward and down, have you snatching at whispers of wind and the gibberish of trees rubbing together, trying to decipher some code, trying to piece together what was broken. It’s hopeless. The past is nothing but a weight. It will build inside of you like a stone.
Take it from me: If you hear the past speaking to you, feel it tugging at your back and running its fingers up your spine, the best thing to do—the only thing— is run.” 
― Lauren Oliver, Delirium

Let's enjoy today

There are two ways to live your life. One is as though nothing is a miracle. The other is as though everything is a miracle

 - Albert Einstein

Gratitude in September

grat·i·tude

ˈɡradəˌt(y)o͞od/

noun

1. the quality of being thankful; readiness to show appreciation for and to return kindness.

   "she expressed her gratitude to the committee for their support"

   synonyms:

   gratefulness, thankfulness, thanks, appreciation, indebtedness;

I'm grateful for friends.

Furry friends with velvet antlers

People friends with empathy and understanding and wisdom

I'm grateful for mini me's and mini him's

I'm grateful for style, for class - for authenticity, 

I'm thankful for anything that is genuine and so so real.

I adore real.

I'm thankful for truth, for knowing.

I'm grateful for sleepy skies and playful lakes

white sails slipping behind a wispy blanket

I'm thankful for fresh air

For oxygen 

For deep reassuring breaths

I'm thankful for "constant"

I'm thankful for touch

For the occasional hug (not to much if you please)

I'm thankful for selfies that don't have to be posted anywhere but here, 

in my web space

I'm thankful for the millions of pictures that I will forever hold

in my mind. Just for me, unshared. 

I'm thankful for my eyes, for life's pictures.

I'm thankful for memories

The good, the bad, and ugly...

because, you see, the formed me.

I'm thankful that it's almost fall,

and that's it okay to pretend it already is.

I'm thankful for beauty and the ability to surround myself with what I love

pinecones and flowers and candles

acorns and twine and muted colors

Thank You so much Father for colors.

Thank you for sweet babies...almost grown but still needing me.

Thank You for grace for all of my shortcomings and letting me grow, showing me how to do better, showing me that I don't have to be perfect to love and to be loved.

Thank you for little hands that want to hold my not- so- big hand.

Thank you for dimples and elbows and soft hair.

Thank you for creativity, for pictures, for paint.

Thank you that I don't have to know what I'm doing to be able to delight in something that I enjoy.

Thank you for eyes wide open

open to everything

Thank you for watching me, in secret...so that I'm not alone...even when I am.

thank You again for trees

thank you again for flowers

thank you again for grasshoppers and bird song

and fluttering leaves

Thank you for open arms

reaching high and dancing beneath your Light

being filled with the Light

glowing with it, shimmering, magnetic

beautiful beautiful Light.

Thank You for texture.

Thank You for differences,

smooth and rough and soft and hard 

edgy and plain

simple, diverse

straight and curvy and still and flowing.

Thank you that my job is to worship ... what an amazing job. 

To be filled with song, to be filled with Spirit, to dance through life

knowing that you smile at my fumbled up clumsy steps.

Knowing that Your eyes sparkle when you see me,

knowing that I can run to you and be lifted up and carried

thank You for who You are. 

Thank you for who I am. 

Thank you. 

Psalm 139:7-18New International Version (NIV)

7 

Where can I go from your Spirit?

    Where can I flee from your presence?

8 

If I go up to the heavens, you are there;

    if I make my bed in the depths, you are there.

9 

If I rise on the wings of the dawn,

    if I settle on the far side of the sea,

10 

even there your hand will guide me,

    your right hand will hold me fast.

11 

If I say, “Surely the darkness will hide me

    and the light become night around me,”

12 

even the darkness will not be dark to you;

    the night will shine like the day,

    for darkness is as light to you.

¹³ 

For you created my inmost being;

    you knit me together in my mother’s womb.

¹⁴ 

I praise you because I am fearfully and wonderfully made;

    your works are wonderful,

    I know that full well.

¹⁵ 

My frame was not hidden from you

    when I was made in the secret place,

    when I was woven together in the depths of the earth.

¹⁶ 

Your eyes saw my unformed body;

    all the days ordained for me were written in your book

    before one of them came to be.

¹⁷ 

How precious to me are your thoughts,[a] God!

    How vast is the sum of them!

¹⁸ 

Were I to count them,

    they would outnumber the grains of sand—

    when I awake, I am still with you.