Mr. and Mrs. Claus

And who does this look like?

This is Alyssa. But she's laying just like Katrina did for so many years. It is wonderful to hear Katrina tell Alyssa to "sit up right!'

Invitation

I ran across this and have ponderred on it for a while. What do you think?

The Invitation © 1999

by Oriah Mountain Dreamer

It doesn’t interest me what you do for a living.

I want to know what you ache for

and if you dare to dream of meeting your heart’s longing.

It doesn’t interest me how old you are.

I want to know if you will risk looking like a fool

for love

for your dream

for the adventure of being alive.

It doesn’t interest me what planets are squaring your moon...

I want to know if you have touched the centre of your own sorrow

if you have been opened by life’s betrayals

or have become shriveled and closed

from fear of further pain.

I want to know if you can sit with pain

mine or your own

without moving to hide it

or fade it

or fix it.

I want to know if you can be with joy

mine or your own

if you can dance with wildness

and let the ecstasy fill you to the tips of your fingers and toes

without cautioning us

to be careful

to be realistic

to remember the limitations of being human.

It doesn’t interest me if the story you are telling me

is true.

I want to know if you can

disappoint another

to be true to yourself.

If you can bear the accusation of betrayal

and not betray your own soul.

If you can be faithless

and therefore trustworthy.

I want to know if you can see Beauty

even when it is not pretty

every day.

And if you can source your own life

from its presence.

I want to know if you can live with failure

yours and mine

and still stand at the edge of the lake

and shout to the silver of the full moon,

Yes.

It doesn’t interest me

to know where you live or how much money you have.

I want to know if you can get up

after the night of grief and despair

weary and bruised to the bone

and do what needs to be done

to feed the children.

It doesn’t interest me who you know

or how you came to be here.

I want to know if you will stand

in the centre of the fire

with me

and not shrink back.

It doesn’t interest me where or what or with whom

you have studied.

I want to know what sustains you

from the inside

when all else falls away.

I want to know if you can be alone

with yourself

and if you truly like the company you keep

in the empty moments.

Greg, DeAnna, and Deb

He cleans up VERY well!

Kalahari

One of the restaurants we ate at while at Kalahari was the Great Karoo. While eating the great meal on our last day, Ken said "that would be a great picture." When I turned around kids were congregating around Kahali, the elephant mascot. Our energetic, and very friendly waitress, Carol, said she's take our picture with Kahali. It a spure of the moment, kid thing to do! It was FUN!

Kalahari

Here's what Ken looked like when he tried to sit on the inner tube raft for the first time. He scared the daylights of the the peite, young lifeguard. Ken is all belly and no butt. He flopped on the inner tube and in slow motion flipped over backwards landing under water on his head. I thought "he better have a good breath!" I pushed on his feet and he popped up like a cork. We laughed to hard!

The pic is from the comic strip B.C. It ran in the Sunday paper and just fit so perfectly.

Garbage

How can you renew when you are full? You're full of all the stuff that needs to be dealt with in your life. I call it the garbage and garbage needs to go. You can stuff any more trash in the bin when it is at the top.

Miriam Webster defines garbage as discarded or useless material; inaccurate or useless data 2 a: trash. What inaccurate or useless data are you holding on to that needs to go? What inaccurate thoughts, feelings, and emotions are building in you? If feelings are unacknowledged they build and build and become trash just like the garbage that goes to the curb each week.

We all have garbage in our lives we hang on to because it is comfortable, is "how it's always been" or for any number of other reasons. It does not mean that the garbage is good for us mentally and physically. In order to dump the garbage, we must first acknowledge its presence, come to terms with what ever the issue, feeling, or emotion we are holding on to is, and then consciously rid it from our minds. We must consciously remove the garbage because that is the last step to ridding our house (self) of trash. Sometimes the garbage tries to sneak back in to our thoughts. When that happens we haven't thoroughly come to terms with the issues and must revisit them again, work through the issues and dump them in the trash again. Only by coming to terms with the issues can we learn self-love which leads to self-acceptance. When we love all the past parts of ourselves that we can not change, then comes acceptance of ourselves, and that's when we dump the garbage for good. Self-acceptance will not have room for trash because self-acceptance is self-love. Love has no room for garbage.

I do not say this process is easy – only essential for our self-worth and growth.

Holiday Party

Tonight is our holiday party at Kalahari in Sandusky. Ken and I have never gone before. We decided to spend the entire weekend. I'm excited! We haven't been out together all dressed up for just us in a long time!

Canoe fun!

Picture: I think we finally figured out the people in the canoe. Gail's in the bow, John's in the stern. But, we have no idea who is in the middle.

Aunt Lois and Uncle Dave live on a chain of five lakes. Dallas is the largest where people could even water ski. The other lakes are Witmer, Westler, Dallas, Hackenberg, and Messick Lakes in the Indian Lakes chain of LaGrange County, Indiana. It's a very small town as you can see from the Wikipedia info below.

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Wolcottville is a town in LaGrange and Noble Counties in the U.S. state of Indiana. The population was 933 at the 2000 census.

My mom is the youngest of five kids. Since we were always the babies, we missed out on a lot of the fun. Or at least we thought we did! The highlight of any campout was to be deemed "big enough" to do anything that the older cousins did! Canoe trips or water skiing were at the top of the status pole! The canoe trip would last all day starting right after breakfast. And you'd better do your part paddling or you were going to get very wet (which was worse than getting yelled at!)! We would head for the dam. It is so quiet and peaceful there. Except the the SWAT! OUCH! SWAT! SWAT! SWAT! OUCH! The deer flies had found a free lunch! And did that bite ever sting! We would have welts the size of peas! Yes, we used the deer fly spray. that just seemed to attract them more. Once past the dam and park, it was time to get down to some serious paddling. We'd wind around the different lakes and eventually around noon stop for a picnic lunch if you were lucky enough to go on the looooonnnnnngggggggg canoe trip. Then more paddling - did I say my arms were very, very, very, tired and sore by now? I didn't complain (much). By early afternoon we'd reach Dallas Lake. The water skiers would be in full force by then. If you weren't careful you'd catch the wave just right and tip. Once down the channel, it was only about an hour's paddling until we reached the dock. We'd pass white and pink lily pads floating in a sea of green leaves. Then under the bridge, around the curve and home! It was the best trip ever! More on "the bridge" in another post.