New Year hopes

I get alot of emails from new age and transformational teachers and many of them are very excited about this new year and the potential for huge positive shifts in individual lives but also in the future of the
planet.

Several of them asked for declarations about their reader's new year hopes and resolutions so I wrote mine out and picked a Goddess Oracle card.

Here's to a magical 2012!!

(All contents © Kris Waldherr 2008. All rights reserved.

Kris Waldherr, the artist who makes these cards said I could put them on my blog as long as I included this link to her facebook page:http://www.facebook.com/l/;KrisWaldherr.com.)

"I want to be happy present and whole. I want to have time to be quiet and take care of myself, napping, eating great food, dancing in my living room, taking walks with my dog and breathing in the fresh air. I want to sleep outside and look at the stars. I want to be playful and present with my husband and children. I want to travel with them and drink in the world around us without rushing from one thing to another, always worried about money and time! I want to help heal people and the world. I want to feel safe shining in all of my brightness (letting go of the fear that my light set free will make others feel smaller or sad and instead believe it will boost their life into brightness!) I want to be free to follow my intuition and create a career in energy healing this year that will create amazing health shifts for people and create financial success for me. I want to eat, move and breathe in a way that supports and sustains me. I want to build a healing cabin in the woods where I can help people feel and create big transformative magic in their lives and in this world. I am ready, world. Bring it on!"



Oooh and I got a nice email back from a lovely woman who has a great gluten free handout and website that I met at Pleasure Camp

Hey Katherine,

Happy New Year! Thank you for your email and sharing what’s in store for you this year, I can feel that your 2012 is going to be an amazing year of wholeness, presence, transformation and healing, how wonderful! I look forward to following along on your blog!

Wishing you the best of everything, this year and beyond!

With Love and Support To Your Gluten-Free & Gorgeous Life,

Danyelle

Danyelle Demchock, BA, NASM, CHEK Practitioner, HCL 2, FDN, CMTA

Certified Holistic Nutrition And Lifestyle Coach

Get My FREE Special Report:

How To Avoid The Top 10 Mistakes That People Make When Going Gluten Free!

http://www.glutenfreeandgorgeous.com

Christmas Morning!

I didn't have to work or be on-call for the holiday for the first time since Lily was born. It was so nice to laze about and not feel rushed. My family came and we had a nice time opening presents and eating in the crowded house.













A purple drum set, a stuffed animal tea party
finally a dog bed (We hadn't trusted she wouldn't eat it, but Santa apparently had more faith in Miss Cookie and you can see that Santa was right. That is a dog who wanted a bed by the fire!)

















Thank goodness the snow cone maker arrived on Santa's sleigh. Georgia's mouth was numb and purple from her multiple snow cones.
Lily made a little nativity scene out of critters.



Georgia eating the ribbon candy I was talking about! My sister brought some for the girls. It is still lovely and still not that tasty (to me, Georgia was sold on it.)


The trampoline goes up!



















Getting too dark to put up the enclosure, hopefully we'll do it sometime soon.

Someone is tired of photos.

Happy Holidays!

Merry Christmas!

Christmas Eve

We all had Christmas Eve off together. We took a walk that lasted much longer than we had planned (the bridge Rob led us to was surrounded by cold mucky marsh) so we had to turn back, hungry and tired. But it was nice to be out in the chilly sun and I was thrilled not to be wrapping presents, which is how I usually spend the day, but I had done a few late-night wrapping episodes and I was free to enjoy the holiday, which was very novel for me.

The fungus above reminds me of ribbon candy our grandmother used to give us on Christmas. It didn't taste very good but it was beautiful. (The candy of my memory; I did not eat the fungus)

















It seems that the beavers are back, chewing the trees so they look like enormous sharpened pencils.

Lily in the setting sun, still smiling on our way home.

Happy Solstice!!

The shortest day.
I can't believe it, it's been so mild and already the year is turning back to light.
Happy Winter!


I took Cookie for a long daytime walk which I haven't done for a bit because life has been so busy.

I was trying to get a clip of the lovely sound of the stream running, but instead Cookie was bounding over the water and shooting through the woods in an adorable way so I captured that instead. Enjoy!

Georgia's pleas

A friend of Georgia's got an early visit from Santa clause and talked about it at school. Apparently he came, left some reindeer hoof prints and a curling iron, so the girl suddenly had glorious curls.
This killed Georgia.
She was furious that someone got special treatment and wanted Santa to come to her house early, too.

She left out this note each bedtime and then scoured the house looking for her slushie maker.

(What? Why the hell does she need a last minute slushie maker? And why would someone have Santa come early and torture the other children around them? I ask you? Is there not enough going on?)

Santa did not come to our house early.

Hopefully a slushie maker is coming on Santa's sleigh. I went to the office at their school to sign in and both the secretary and the nurse separately told me they really hoped Santa was bringing Georgia a slushie maker.
This surprised me and let me know my child is quite vocal at school.

They told me they had asked Georgia's teacher's aide if maybe they should give me a call so I knew how much she wanted one and he replied "I'm sure she knows." He was right, but I was very touched that they both knew what she wanted and thought I should know. Sweet!

Christmas carols in the neighborhood

It was raining and I was ready to bail on our plans to carol up the street, but my friends were willing, the kids were ready, so out we went.
The rain held off for us and we spread holiday cheer. Some recipients had been prepared for our coming, but some we surprised.
The candles blew out and we didn't know the songs quite as well as we thought we did, but it was really fun.
We'll do it again next year!

Walk to clear the head

after the hot busy frenzy of Georgia's birthday party.

Lily's new leopard coat actually camouflaged her down by the river!
Cookie was thrilled to be out. (Poor thing, we had to leave her in her crate in the car because I didn't want her jumping up on children and stealing all the food.)




Someone leaves all these stone cairns along the mushroom walk. I love the surprising shapes of the odd towers among the trees. I think I know who does it but I don't want to ask him. I enjoy it being a mystery.

























Rob throwing logs and breaking things on the walk as he likes to do. (He's actually clearing the branches so he can get his bike over the tree.)

We came home and cleaned up.
Georgia was sad her Grandparent's gift to her had not arrived on Saturday like it was supposed to (and like the online tracking said it would!)
It was Sunday, but amazingly the post office truck pulled into our driveway and handed the hopping-up-and-down-Lily a package for Georgia. Hooray! Her Bitty baby had arrived! She was happy and spent the rest of the evening playing with her new toys, while we parents cleaned up and got ready for Monday.

Georgia's 6th Birthday Party!

Big sister Lily was a big help, although she was a reptile with a red tongue for a bit.

Decorating gingerbread cookies with her friends.






Lily turned out to be a wonder with frosting.
She made that exquisite elephant and decorated Georgia's very popular cupcake cake. (I made a chocolate whipped cream frosted cake that looked like a sloping and strange mushroom cupcake that no one ate!)

The finished product.
I am still not eating sugar or gluten so it feels weird to be offering all these foods to people (children!) that make me feel like such crap. But Georgia wanted cookies and cakes and that's just fine.
Blowing out the candles!
























And opening presents.





















She had a good time, although she was mopey when it was done. She has been waiting forever for her birthday. She's got some nice friends in kindergarten and really seems to be settling in to school and enjoying it. Thank goodness, no more sitting outside the pricipal's office for calling someone an "Idiot shit face!" Oh I didn't mention that? It was a difficult transition for a while, but she's finally got her groove.

To Cambridge for the Christmas Revels

We went by the Peabody museum of Natural History again this year.
Georgia was transfixed by these eggs.
She really has a deep connection to eggs. She yearns for them, to sit on them to take care of them.
She was curious who was tending to these.
We had to convince her that they were empty before she would walk away.























We couldn't walk through Harvard Yard because there were police guards all around preventing the Occupy folks from coming in and setting up their tents. You can see a few students had settled in and the administration were preventing any more. I tried to explain the situation to the girls and explain the Occupy movement, but I kept getting choked up when I tried to explain it, which puzzled them and surprised me.

Sanders Theater, with a food truck for the occupy crowd. My mother got a grilled cheese sandwich and said it was great.

















Lily said, "Look there's Athena!" and I felt proud she know her Greek Goddesses.





The set was magnificent!
The lights delight me!




























Georgia was nervous because last year ghosts roamed up and down the aisles. She sat on my mom's lap and worried (appropriately!) about the creepy beautiful skeleton that danced around the edges of the stage throughout the performance.




















Dancing at intermission in the lobby! The horns were blasting from the balcony as we all song Lord of the Dance.






My sister and Lily applauding. It was a marvelous show, well worth the drive there and back (sometimes I wonder as I am packing them up in the car to go on these adventures..)







Fishing for starlight.
Suddenly all around us in the balcony there were singers holding stars.
Breathtaking! I started when I looked beside me and there was a woman in costume holding a light. She had moved in so quietly, I hadn't known she was there. I elbowed Lily on my left who jumped when she looked over, then she nudged my sister who also was surprised.







































Then the woman began to sing gloriously!
It felt like such a blessing to be sitting there as all this magic was happening around us. It felt like how I imagine the angels that surround and support us, so powerful and full of light, so close and ready to sing, but usually we don't know they are there, just waiting for us to ask them for their help.




Here is a quick clip of the magnificent singing!



The chandelier, the stained glass, the reddish glowing wood!






The crowd at the end of the night.

Georgia turns six!

"Finally!!" She says

















I went into labor with her 6 years ago today. It was pouring rain over layers of hardened ice, I had a baby shower scheduled, but instead I started to contract. I paged the office and Susan Liddell called me back and said, "Looks like we're going to do this again, Katherine. Why don't you come in." It was quite an adventure, Georgia's birth. One I will tell sometime when I am not so tired. But when I looked down at my belly in the bath that Lily and I were taking while we waited for Rob to get home from work, I thought, "That looks like a sideways-baby-belly." and it was. Rascal had turned last minute and was not even head down!

Mary, Jesus and a Lamb

I was looking for an image to inspire me in the midst of the holiday chaos that was about to take me down.
Although I am not Christian, I am inspired by Mother Mary and Jesus. I love the paintings and the images the mother and son together.
My friend has some pet donkeys and we were talking about them someday starring in nativity plays which brought us to the story of Christmas: the stable, the sweet warm breath of the animals and the baby Jesus wrapped and put in a manger, which is a roughly carved wooden food trough for animals. A miracle in a very grounded setting.

In my work I see so many new mothers swaddling and holding their new babies with such love and awe. It is a momentous transformation, becoming a mother. I love that part of the Christmas story that sanctifies new motherhood and blesses the family as they are surrounded by the quietly breathing animals.

The Cherry Tree carol is one of my very favorite holiday songs and I sang it to the girls when I was pregnant and as a lullaby when they were young. Here's Joan Baez singing it on youtube.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DYaFGSG_x80&feature=related

Lovely

Lily's first clarinet concert

with beginner band was actually quite stirring. They did a beautiful job and all took the performance very seriously.

Here's Lily with her band instructor who held them all together with a perfect balance of cheerful and strict. It was delightful!