Marchy March

March, oh I love you and the promise of summer being so close!

I had me a little "Meet Monat" hair washing where my friends could come over and have their hair washed by moi.  And also experience the incredibleness that Monat is. 

Dr Suess day.  Have I said how much I love having elementary age children?  It really is the best.  They planned and created these outfits all by themselves.  I didn't even realize it was the Drs special day. 

I've been trying to run a whole mile without stopping.  In my previous life before child #5 I was a runner.  Ok, not entirely true because I have run consistently since she was born but I once was a fast runner and also a long distance runner.  This is literally me taking baby steps.  Not trying to "go back" but just working on becoming something I enjoy doing and health is always my focus.  

Cloe asked our neighbor and her friend to Preference.  The poor kids was like a foot shorter than her. And I don't know if he said a word the entire date.  She looked gorgeous and kind of just wanted to go to the dance so I guess it worked out. 

So I guess you could say I"m all yogi now.  I started attending yoga once a week in December and LOVED it.  I use to not enjoy it because it was slow and sometimes hard.  For some reason, it has really clicked with me and its such a part of my life.  I ended up buying a monthly pass and try to go 3 times a week on a good week.  I made goal to go inverted (upside down).  This day in the photo was the first time I had lifted my feet off the ground and trusted my body to support my body.  not yet inverted but it's coming.  

eat lunch with the chitlins day at school.  

first tooth!  Dad loves yanking with the plyers and luckily this came out on the first yank.  Just a reminder that my baby is in fact growing up.  I don't care what you say, she is still my baby.  thankfully she is a little petite thing so I can still easily carry her around. 

we are canyon buddies. 

I found this awesome farm about 15 minutes south of us.  I went down specifically to buy beeswax cloth in an effort to use less plastic.  I bought my cloth and of course some beeswax candles and while Cloe enjoyed the goats, cows and llamas in the pasture.  

I've been on an organizing and get rid of kick this year.  Not stressing myself out and doing it all at once but taking it slow.  This is our linen closet that stays hidden.  Now I'm amazed that I tolerated that chaos for so many years!!  

My cute girl Charlotte.  

What does a peaceful life look like to you?  What is a life of peace?  

In almost all religion, there is a promise of blessings through righteousness.  I think that promise is often mistaken for a peaceful and easy life.  Also in the teaching of mindfulness/meditation/positive thinking that if you put out love and positivity, then that is what you will experience in life.  And I think that gets misinterpreted as you only have positive and loving interactions with people.  Both ways of thinking, religious and positive thinking, can be harmful because when you do experience negative interactions it’s because YOU are doing something wrong and YOU are causing this to happen to you.  Of course there is a devils advocate response but that’s not my focus.  

Yesterday I had crazy interactions with 3 people.  Like, I haven’t had someone talk to me like that since 8^thgrade and this was an adult.  A mother! After, I went inward and thought “what am I doing to create this in my life?”  Through both interactions, on my doorstep mind you, I remained very calm and clear headed. But what I realized is, we have no control how others think, act, react, judge, interpret and so on.  I can be as righteous/positive thinking/meditative as I want but I can’t control people showing up in my life that thrive on drama and chaos.  I control how I react and how I let it affect me.  I control whether or not I get involved in the chaos of the situation.  I realized yesterday as I reflected on what had happened and trying to find a “why” that there isn’t a “why”, this isn’t because I’m necessarily doing something wrong.  This is life and this is living life with other humans that have free agency and that have other life experience. 

As Wayne Dyer says “Peace is the result of retraining your mind to process life as it is rather than as you think it should be.”

That perfectly sums up the conclusion I was brought to.  The way I react and feel is where I continue to experience the peace no matter what. 

I posted this to my social media and left out details to be mature.  Personal blog?  free range.  I had a bat shit crazy mom of like 10 on my porch with her barely adult daughter getting all ghetto.  Trying to insult me and my parenting and they were having ZERO affect.  I was a substitute at another one of their kids class and the kid tried to get in a fight and take it into the hallway and I was like "no, get back in the class." just picture me trying to defuse the situation and also being the responsible adult in charge of the classroom.  I said something disrespectful to her son, in her opinion so she was also going off on me about that.  my response: "call the school.  Report it to the school.  get off my porch."  When this isn't normal life for you or normal way to react to things in life, it's very bizarre and a bit jarring.  

February can get dreary but we made the best of it.

January is long and February remains dreary but we get to celebrate 2 birthdays and I'm a lover of Valentines day.  So all in all, it was a good month.  But time is just flying by now, I can't believe we are entering the final count down to school being over!  I've been really into getting my house organized and living as minimalist as a family of 7 can live.  We are not minimalists but what I've done thus far has been such an improvement and it is much easier to keep the house clean.  I'm really trying to break the habit of consumerism.  I like the lifestyle of using less resources and buying high quality and materials that are sustainable.  Small things like taking our own bags to the grocery store but we also take our own cloth bags for produce.  Anyway, if I'm not careful, I'll be talking about astrological stuff and Mercury in Retrograde before you know it.  Gotta be careful with me around rabbit holes.  

But while we're on the woo woo topic, on the 5th of the month, which was Lunar New Year but also a New Moon.  So I hung out with my people in a teepee for a New Moon ceremony.  One of my happy places is in a teepee, with drums, meditation and like minded spiritual people 

The smart girl that I am, I planned a workshop for Ryan to teach in Moab.  They pay him to come down and pay for his hotel and then I get to hang out in Moab all day.  Who's the smarty?  I'm the smarty.  We ended up bringing Abbey, Charlie and Aiden with us and left Cloe and Brody home alone on a school night.  eeeek.  Because it was a school night and I knew they had to wake up early, I knew we would be safe of house parties.  But Moab is so beautiful.  The girls and I went to brunch because we're fancy.  Or you could just call it a late breakfast.  Then we went for a nice hike and eventually made our way to the workshop.  The HS students that attended were surprisingly good.  We were very impressed.  

February commenced the basketball season.  Aiden and Charlie were so fun to watch.  They're athletic but also aggressive.  Charlie made it clear to me that should would not go to any of her games and that I was wasting my money.  Of course she ended up loving it.  She doesn't love the idea of new things.  They make her little nervous.  

Valentines day is one of my favorite holidays.  I love all the holidays but I think in a dreary and cold winter, adding red, pink and white to my house makes it all better.  My kids love our tradition of a romantic dinner and it's always fun to eat a candle lit dinner.  

Ryan also has a tradition of dressing nice and bringing the girls flowers and chocolate to them while they're at school.  It helps a lot that it embarrasses some of them because parents aren't parenting correctly if they aren't embarrassing their kids. 

There is an instagrammer that is a therapist and a big advocate for self acceptance and love.  She is for sure doing her part squashing the beliefs that diet culture create.  She hosted a self love dance party so I bought 2 tickets.  Once for me and one for a gal that I know can really cut a rug.  Cloe is cool enough to go dancing with her old ma.  I think she had fun.  I did and that's all that matters. 

Cloe went ahead and turned 17 this year.  She is our straight A student and she is starting to see the benefits of that.  She is getting letters from colleges before even applying.  She loves to cook and is considering taking culinary classes her senior year off campus and then who knows from there.  When you have good grades and a good ACT score you give yourself plenty of options. 

Abbey turned 14 on the 20th.  She's our little social butterfly and is CONSTANTLY asking me if she can go places with her friends.  It gets exhausting.  For her birthday, she requested that I check her and her friends out for lunch and they go to Costa Vida.  But she is witty and her spam instagram account always makes me laugh.  She begged for her own room and now that she has it, she is too scared to sleep in there and is still sleeping with Charlotte and Aiden.  When they say no, she floats around until she can sneak her way into bed with someone.  

Luckily for us, my cousins birthday is this month.  She lives in AZ but decided to come to UT for her birthday to celebrate with family.  She rented the neatest cabin and invited us to join.  The highlight was the bunkbed room.  It was a wall of bunkbeds, and very comfortably slept 8.  We had so much fun.  My mom pulled the kids around the property on sleds. 

soooooooo....this is happening

it's been calling me.  i've been drawn back in.  of course, this has required me to do some dusting and of course seeing if it sparked joy in me.  clearly it did, because i've folded it up nicely and it didn't end up in the "get rid of pile".  

i think that it is important that we tell our story and write it down. i have felt a pull to do that for a while but the hand writing part of it has kept me procrastinating.  for now, i'm just going to do a monthly post, kind of up date thing and go from there.  i do have a story to tell.  i have changed, evolved and grown.  i'll tell my complete story eventually.  i love this blog.  i love looking back and seeing what we were doing and how we have changed but also, the type of person i was and what has helped get me to where i am now.  

if you're new here, the excitement and entertainment really happened in 2007 and 2008 when we were living in florence, italy.  honestly, how do you continue blogging after that?

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here it is, first photo on 2019.  cloe and i made a delicious brunch.  Cloe has discovered the joy of cooking and baking.  she is vegetarian so her recipes tend to get more expensive than the average recipe and some times are appealing to just a vegetarian.  but she is almost 17! and we love making as much from scratch together.  this meal even included fresh squeezed OJ.

my little sister is living in town with my mom while her husband is deployed in Japan.  She is really loving having free babysitting.  all. the. time.  we see those 2 little ones at our house often.  but they sure are cute and it's fun to get to know them since they have always lived out of state.  

i recently heard a podcast about this girl that would have a once a month night of abundance with her friend.  they get dressed up and go out to eat somewhere new and don't worry at all about the cost.  they only have positive conversations and they talk about their goals and accomplishments.  i love this idea.  i decided to incorporate it into my life.  i don't have a date yet, so i am taking volunteers.  shortly after hearing the podcast, this one dress a month for a year instagrammer showed up in my life.  you could go hear her speak about her experience and the creative process and see the dresses.  oh, and the dress code was semi formal.  so i bought a ticket for my mom and i.  it was a nice evening celebrating another woman accomplishment and enjoying her work.  these dresses were incredible and beautiful!  she designed them all herself and sewed them.  and she didn't use patterns!

i do have to apologize because i feel like you got ripped off.  i wrote a pretty sweet blog post yesterday that included the same info but just, you know, written better.  i couldn't pull out the humor this time.  or the capitalization of letters.  

everyone gather in a circle, hands in.  on the count of 3, 1..2..3..COURTNEY!  alright!  we've got this, i'm doing this. 

eeeeeeeefffffffffff!!!!! I just did a fantastic post that was full of update, humor and wit.  gone. screw you old computer!