Homestead time.

Finally am not in limbo an able to share my life again. For a good long while I had to be very mum about things because we were trying to get moves in place and ready on our time frame rather than due to the choices of others.

We are now the happy owners of over 20 acres in North East Washington State. We are within spitting distance of the canadian border. We have pasture and timber. We are withing a few hunderd yards of a large lake. We have a pond. The house is smaller and one story making things much easier on me. We are finally able to really homestead. Grow and raise and make and be. I get to put my knowledge to use. I get to improve my health. I get to get back to writing. My girls are in schools with only 400 kids. The nearest town where they go to school has a population of 3000. It's awesome. So look forward to some posts on my new chapter. I plan to explore so much. Making my own soaps and body products due to my chem sensitivity, growing a garden, canning it all, hunting more, shooting more. Very excited.

Epiphany Dreams.

My favorite dreams are the ones that reveal something, that help us grow and learn. I dream a lot. it is actually a bad thing health wise as I don't slide into that deeper healing sleep easily but for my imagination it is a boon. I get many book ideas from my dreams. I get to be the tough badass supermom in my dreams that my body won't allow in reality. And every so often something pops through my dreams that defines the epiphany.

I usually have many dreams a night. If its a great story idea I try to note it down. This mornings final dream was lovely and one worth sharing.

It was Christmas and so beautiful out. I was in the mountains at some type of resort type place. It seemed like hundreds of people where there. So many families. There were trees and snow and a lake that was weirdly not frozen. In my dream we were doing different family things as a larger group and as just my little family. Games, and snow fights, boat rides and sledding. It was beautiful. But I began to notice a problem. Many of the families, and I recognized a lot of friends, of tv families, of celebrities, were not happy. The kids were fighting, the parents were oblivious. As some tried to decorate for the holiday others were miserable. Then one night we were gathered together for some type of pageant or display and I had decided enough was enough. I stood in front of all those people, many who were bickering and I told them to knock it off. I told them that they had forgotten their purpose. That the purpose of life was to parent a child. That it didn't matter how that dynamic looked. It didn't matter how a family was constructed but every adult had a responsibility to be the best they could be with a thought for the next generation in mind. That our job was to teach them a legacy of strength, compassion, honesty, generosity, and survival. We need to teach them skills that matter by showing them what matters.

Then I woke to my 4 year old Monkey yelling from down stairs for some cereal and I had to chuckle. It was funny to go from such peace to such yelling BUT I realized the thoughts were true. Every adult is a parent. It may be in the role of a teacher or a counselor. An aunt or uncle or just a family friend but we all interact with children and the children in our lives look to us to teach them. Yes the main teaching needs to be from their actual parent however we all need to be striving for more for them. They truly are our future. I know the kind of future I want to see and for them to have. Do you?

What a month!

Holy crazy month. I have been just swamped. I had events 4 out of the last 6 weekends with Damsel. It was pretty amazing. I was able to complete the director training program and promoted up two ranks during the program. I gained so much. So much confidence, so much joy and contentment. My goal when I began this Damsel path has always been to build an incredible team, to help my family, and to give back. In January with the help of my friends we raised $500 for the Gaston family. In February we raised over $400 for the Pratt family. This month we are working hard to help a sweet little 2 year old boy with liver cancer.

I also sort of fell into an activism role. I offered to help sponsor a giveaway for a new fb page called 1 Million Moms Against Gun Control. I also offered to help in any way I could. So when the awesome creator decided to take her dream bigger I was happy to help. So I am now the Nevada lead for what is becoming a nationwide nonprofit with an aim at providing education, awareness, and support on rights issues. We are actually even discussing expanding to the full constitution and not just focusing on gun rights. Being involved from the start in this is pretty cool.

I have had to take a brake this week from everything as I was feeling run down but I am loving it. Loving the ability to nurture my passions. Enjoying the meeting of new people. It truly has been an incredible joy.

Farewell 2011 Hello 2012

Happy New Year!! It has been a pretty good year for us at TSLBF. We welcomed a new addition, we followed dreams, we bought some awesome guns, built up plans, we made big changes. We had our share of illness. My diagnosis came this year. Gracie has had some boy caused antics to make anyone cringe and an ER doc know them by name. We faced grief and triumph. The blog has grown beyond just us and our brother blog. I think our positives outweigh any negatives. Personally I know a lot of the community I have discovered because of this blog has helped with that positive. We are very thankful people read us and seem to like us most days hehe.

We wish all of you joy and happiness , health and success as you enter this New Year. I know we will all face challenges but I think with the support of friends and great family anything can be conquered.

2012 is a year to expand our preps some more, work on our personal goals (I WILL publish dang it), and enjoy each other. I look forward to it!!

Why my mom is my mom.

The woman who gave birth to me did only two things that I can thank her for. She gave birth to me and she gave birth to my brother. Otherwise her drugs were more important to her and still are. She was out of my life when I was 5 and I did not see her again until my father flew her in for my wedding. She hardly spoke and did not add to it at all. I thought seeing her would be this amazing reunion. I was the little girl who dreamed of a mother who adored me but just couldn't be there. I learned that day who my mother was. It was not the woman who gave birth to me and ignored me for years. Instead my MOTHER was the woman who lovingly handmade my wedding dress out of my old prom dress because I could not afford anything else and my dad wasn't to keen to help either. (He later did help.) She went to all the appointments to pick flowers and food and she altered the bridesmaid dresses that needed it. She helped me get ready while the woman who carried me in her womb hid in a hotel nearby. When my first child was born she drove 2 hours to be there to help coach me through labor and keep my hubby from passing out as he watched me in pain. When my second was born she flew 2 states away just to be backup in case hubby couldn't handle the surgery and to help me through that first day. She loves my children more than anything. She treats me like she does the children she birthed. The true miracle of this is that she and my dad divorced not long after my marriage. She had no reason to keep me in her life. Every other woman my dad brought into our lives left when the relationship ended. She stayed. She is my Mom in ever single sense of the word and I am so amazingly grateful for her and for that. On days when it feel like no one is on my side but my husband I know she has my back. She calls just to check on me or say hi. My dad doesn't even do that. It is pretty amazing to feel like I finally have a mom. (I also got 2 pretty awesome sisters out of the deal and a brother who is pretty great too!!)

Music is my passion.... well....

Words are my passion. When they flow from me as the scene unfolds it is sheer joy. Music helps with that. Over the course of my editing my very helpful friends helped me discover a gap in the book. Mr. Bad had a missing piece. Why was he the way he was? I hinted at it but didn't explain it and other than the first chapter Mr. Bad was not to be seen again until chapter 13. Granted the first 12 Chapters covered only a few days but still. Once the gap was found I had to solve it. Obviously I knew why he was satan and why we had 12 chapters cover a week and then jumped forward a few weeks in time. The reader had no idea and we needed to cover that. So write I did. I added a nice chunk to chapter 6 from Mr. Bad that explained the questions my team raised. Then I added a chapter between 11 and 12 that answered a few more questions and helped with the leap forward. The chunk was about 900 words and it seemed to take all day to write. I wrote it on my laptop, downstairs, during all the mommy, wifey, Lila day stuff. Ugggg...... It took ages. I worried it was choppy and weird but my team loved it. Today I tackled the new chapter. They haven't read it yet since I just put it up for them but it was 1900 words and it flowed. I wrote it on my PC. My beautiful dual screen beauty with music streaming from Pandora in the background. Oh it was bliss. It was a small chapter but it did what I wanted it to do and in 2 hours the words cascaded out. I wasn't even sure when I sat down what was going to happen, just that 2 vital points needed to be addressed. Why was our hero avoiding our heroine? AND why had a talk not happened that had been alluded too all book long? Answered both. Beautifully. I think anyway, lol. The music helped with that, being in my space helped with that. I have been trying to edit with the kids around and that just ends with me feeling frustrated. This worked better. Yay!!! Lila found her groove!

Butterflies and Rainbows.

I was at dinner with my awesome Mom and her guy and my sweet family and I realized something. The fact that I am an eternal optimist is pretty interesting because I am surrounded by pessimists. The revelation came after my Mom checked the BYU/K State score and saw BYU was down 10 at the half time mark and she said, "Man this sucks, I was looking forward to seeing them play in SLC." Her guy and I both spoke up and said "It's not over yet." but it made me realize how strange I am. I am surrounded by doom and gloom seers. Hubs and a couple others see their glasses as half full but the core of my growing up years was all pessimists. My Grandma was always for the doom and gloom. It could be sunny with a 10% chance of rain and she would say, "Better cover the plants for the storm." That spread to so many of the people in my life. People who saw me fail the 7th grade and said, "This girl will never graduate." (I then skipped a grade and graduated in 2000 like I was supposed to.) Or those who said, "She is 18 and marrying a bad boy, this will never work." (9 years and counting!) I've even had the, "She is going to be just like her biological mother. A drug addict and a leech." (I have 2 pretty amazing girls and nary a drug in sight!) I've spent so much time listening to others low expectations and thoughts that there are moments even my happy self just gets buried. I learned that I have to be happy, I have to find the joy, I have to push past the failures. I am better than those low expectations and those low thoughts and that is why I am always finding the rainbows and flowers even in the stormiest moments of my life. That optimism has gotten us through some trials that no one should live through. So bring on the butterflies life. I'll always see you!

Grief!!

I have had the chance lately to reflect on grief. Everyone feels grief at one time or another. It can be from the death of a loved one, the ending of a relationship, the last day of a job, or even because something you loved broke. we can be 10 or 110 and still have moments of grief. One thing I have realized is that no one feels grief the same way. Sure others can feel sympathy for your loss but NO ONE will feel exactly the way you do. I think the worst thing to say to a grieving friend is "I know how you feel." You may have shared a similar experience but you do not know how that person feels about their loss. My biggest moment of grief came not at the death of a friend or grandparent close to my heart. It came at a miscarriage. I had had one before many years ago but this one hurt more. This pregnancy we were trying for. I was almost desperate in my need for us to have a second child. It took years to get pregnant. When I did and then lost it I thought I would not be able to survive. That baby had a name, a face in my head, a life of possibilities. It reminded me that my grief was not less or more than anyone else though. It was just mine. Respect those you love who grieve by letting them.