October 22nd-November 14, 2012 Life at Light Speed, Laser Tag, and Tacos!

     Remember how I was saying in the last blog entry that yoga often falls by the wayside for me when life speeds up? Well, right after the retreat life sped up to light speed levels.  My youngest son turned 9 on October 28, and then we had the PTO Mother-Son Laser Tag event, which I volunteered to coordinate on the 29th (with Halloween close on this event’s heels a couple of days later).  Next, I had a day or two to breathe before coordinating my boys’ combined laser tag and taco birthday party on November 4^th followed by selling my children’s books at the fall craft fair on the 5^th.  Busy, busy days….so this weekend, I chose to NOT schedule anything! J  In effect, I am forcing my life to slow down for a bit.  It was a good weekend to catch up, spending time at the snack bar where the internet is wireless and a bit faster for downloading all the snapshots taken from the wedding. I also was able to take the time to design our holiday cards for family and friends. It was nice not to have anything scheduled and to have a chance to enjoy watching both boys play at home over the weekend with their new Duncan Imperial and Butterfly Yo-Yo’s and practice on their new roller skates and rollerblades.  I love that yo-yo’s and roller skates are still as asked for as gifts for my boys as they were when I was their age. Even though life has its roller coaster lulls and light speed days, I have found what my mom has told me repeatedly since I had my children to be true…life seems to go by faster as we age.  I still don’t know how August-October occurred so quickly and now we are almost at Thanksgiving, then Christmas, and a whole new year.  My children are 9 and 11 now. Time stops for no man or woman or child, I suppose.  I simply hope to make the best of it and ensure I do the best I can by others in my family and within my life.  Next week being Thanksgiving, I am thankful another year with my babies and my first year of marriage with my honey.  I am thankful to be living in the same household and on the same island with him. I am thankful for a job, a home, good food to eat, and so many, many other things God has blessed me with today and every day of my life.  I hope all of you out there in blogging world can also find your blessings in life today and be thankful for them.  Sometimes they may be few and far between, but if you are willing to look, there’s always something to be grateful for. 

 

October 15-October 22, 2012 Yogic Bliss and Peace…

     An important constant in my life the last 5-7 years has been yoga.  My friend on the island introduced me to it when I was still a stay at home mom.  Immediately, I fell in love with its graceful poses, deliberately quiet motion, and its ability to distress and detoxify my life, no matter how much or how little I practice.  My friend and I would stick around at the pool after the water aerobics class she taught was completed and practice the plow, core exercises, and general stretching along with everyone’s favorite pose, shavasana or relaxation pose.  Then, we moved into doing Rodney Yee yoga videos in her home with other friends, and this ramped it up quite a bit as Rodney is a yoga master who can get into poses I will never achieve, but I do like to try now and again.  So, up to this point in my early years of yoga practice, I had never gone to a class or practiced with a certified instructor of yoga, but I was already hooked.  Next, my friend’s sister, who is a certified yoga teacher, visited the island and offered a yoga retreat. Well, of course, I was all in for this! I was so excited to attend an actual 3-D class, not the 2-D ones I had been following on my DVD player, although to this day, those are still my main mode of yoga practice.  I don’t want to discount what those videos are worth, especially when there are no classes available here and for individual and private at home practice, there are some exceptional DVD’s out there, but it is an entirely different and unique experience to practice with an instructor and a class full of people during a retreat. This particular retreat, offered by my friend’s sister back in 2007, came at a very stressful time in my life, when I was in the middle of my divorce and had recently moved out of my home and left my children to remain there with their father for a time while I settled into a dorm room by myself.  Party because of the challenges I was going through at that time, attending a yoga retreat was one of the best experiences I have had on the atoll. It was the perfect way to begin anew.  The quiet of my new home combined with the quiet and reflective nature of yoga classes at the start and end of every day gave me a chance to see everything in a new perspective and to cherish that time as a chance to pull myself together, to find myself again, and to start the healing process. That’s where the desire to continue my journey with yoga really became ingrained in my heart for good, and my love for the practice deepened.  

     After that first retreat, my now husband and I traveled to Bali the following spring for a yoga retreat…by far, still my favorite vacation to date.  And this past October, which is what started this blog entry, my friend’s sister returned and held a second retreat, which I again had the privilege to attend. I don’t practice as regularly as I would like to because life speeds past me way too fast, but the practice of yoga is always there for me.  I do not have to depend or wait on anyone else to get started. I don’t have to have a lot of equipment or even a large amount of time to practice. I can practice just about anywhere, on the beach, at home, in a small space just big enough for me.  And when I’ve completed my practice, no matter how short or long, I feel peaceful because it quiets the constant spinning of my mind. It gives me a chance to refocus, rest my brain, and find center again. It’s very similar to prayer for me, but with the added element or stretching and relaxing the body as well. When body and mind healing are combined at the same time, it provides a deeper sense of calm.  So, this past week, yogic peace and bliss has been my companion, and I am thankful for it and what it offers to my life.  

October 9, 2012-My Published Family!!

     It’s time to reveal a bit more about myself to my blog followers (most of you already know this, but for those who don’t know me personally and only through the blog, you may learn something new about me today). For years, I have been writing children’s picture books, building stories around things my boys have said and done that were too cute to not record in some fantastic, creative way.  I have sent many a query letter to book publishers, trying to convince them to publish these books, but I’ve yet to have a bite. So, when I was teaching at the elementary school back in the 2009-2010 school year, I had an idea. I would self-publish the books while I could afford it, and if I never sold more than enough books to simply break even, that would be okay because I would have a family heirloom to treasure forever.  Well, the only problem was that I am not much of an artist, and these are books written for preschoolers, so it is essential they have great, big colorful illustrations to go with the stories I had written.  My children were no longer preschoolers at the time, but they were both very interested in and good at drawing, so I asked them if they would want to illustrate some of my books that I had written about them.  They agreed and chose two of their favorites to illustrate individually.  It took about 2 years to complete all the illustrations and then about a year to make it through the self-publishing process, but as of this fall, you can find 2 of my children’s books on Amazon.com, Barnes and Noble online, Books-A-Million, etc…and through my very own author’s websites created by Dog Ear Publishing! So, what’s the new information I am going to share as I’m sure I have written to you all about writing children’s books before?  I am going to reveal my name (or at least my author’s name-which is my maiden name) and my book titles on this blog. I have always keep names out of this very public and open blog forum because I simply felt more comfortable with sharing in that way since this type of journaling is very, very personal, but I am too proud of a momma to not let everyone know where they can find these books, so I cannot keep my name a secret anymore.  I would love for you all to check them out and let me know what you think.  If you go to Amazon, you will find them under “Alligators Coming!” and “Gotta See Nathan!” by Susannah Gray. The alligators book was illustrated by my oldest son, and the other book was illustrated by my youngest. You can also find them at AlligatorsComing.com and GottaSeeNathan.com.  I’m so proud of what my babies have done, and so excited to finally accomplish something I’ve wanted to do all my life.  Can’t wait to hear from you all when you have a chance to look them up!!

October 8, 2012-My First Quarter Marathon…

     When I was in high school, I ran Cross Country and a little track, mostly hurdles.  Our Cross Country meets mainly consisted of 2 miles runs every weekend through a wooded area around my hometown in Alabama during the season.  Two to three miles is good by me.  I can do that, even now, but more than that, I’m not usually that interested in.  I know people on the island who run marathons and talk about regularly running 20 miles around our 3 mile long, ½ mile wide piece of coral, and I cannot imagine that, and I will probably never achieve such a distance in my own running experiences. I admire those who do, and I have always enjoying running to a certain extent, just not that extent. J  At any rate, until today, I have never run farther than a 5 K, which is 3.1miles, and that was when I was in high school, and my running buddies and I entered the Monte Sano Mountain 5 K run up one of our local “hills,” as nothing in the valley where I grew up is tall enough to be considered an actual mountain. Today, I ran (and I use the term ran very, very loosely-it’s more like using the running motion, but only going the pace of a brisk walker) 6.52 miles in the Columbus Day Runabout ¼ Marathon. You could also choose a length of a ½ marathon (13.2 miles), but I thought for me, that might be a bit much (ha, like I could even survive that at this point in my life).  Anyway, I decided to start out in a jog and figured when I got tired, I would stop running and walk until I felt like running again. I knew I could easily jog ½ the distance, but never thought I would job the entire 6+ miles.  My oldest son helped out with the water stations as part of his Boy Scout troop, and at some point, I decided that I’ve run this far, I might as well at least run until I reach the 2^nd and last water station where my son was waiting with a cold cup of water for me…then maybe I’d walk the rest of the way. Well, the second water station was right about the 5-mile mark, so why stop at all now!  I basically finished last behind the 2 men who were walking/jogging the entire race in front of me, and beating the times only of the other ladies in our age category who walked the entire race, but that’s okay. I am proud to have finished it, and to even be able to do it at all cold turkey like that. I didn’t train for it, and really haven’t even been able to make time to go out an run regularly lately, so it was an accomplishment for me, and maybe it will even motivate me to get out there more often and do so physical training, so I can improve upon my time next year, that is if my first ¼ marathon doesn’t also end up being my last. J    

July 20-Now (October 7, 2012)-The First Three Months of Married Life

     Looking back at my blog today, I realized that August and September escaped  without my written notice. Sorry about that for those of you who check in at my blog now and again to see if I’m still around. J  I’m alive and well, praise the Lord, but it’s definitely been a very exciting three months starting with my children almost leaving to go live with their dad and step-mom in Alabama and eventually working something out with my ex, so that they all stayed, at least for another school year, I think. Then with the start up of school, busy days at work, volunteer duties picking back up (yes, I’m still teaching Sunday School, serving on the board of the PTO, and helping out with 4-H clubs here on island), I don’t really even remember September, although I will say the honeymoon continues.  My husband and I are transitioning from being weekend warriors, so to speak, to being together 24 /7, but we couldn’t be happier to just be on the same island and in the same household, finally!!  We’ve been through so much as a couple and a family already, that it only seemed natural to unite our lives even more fully to tackle the challenges and experience the joy of living in this world together for the rest of our lives. Unfortunately, we haven’t had a chance to go on that honeymoon yet, although just living in the same house often feels like a honeymoon to me. Previously, we only got to be together every day when we were on vacations, so I guess you could say, we have remained in a mini-vacation mode the past 3 months. During that time, we’ve cleaned out and reorganized the house, making room for my husband’s stuff due to arrive on the barge from his island any day now, we hope, and we’ve attempted to begin figuring out a family budget, particularly in the area of food purchases. My magnificent chef of a husband has worked hard on a rotating menu plan, which cut our grocery bills by at least a fourth. Knowing what exactly to buy, according to the menu for the week, and not overbuying on things we end up not eating before they go bad made a bigger difference than I ever realized it could.  As we all learn and grow together as a family, life moves on. The boys both have birthdays coming up soon, and they will be 9 and 11. I can’t believe it. The summer itself has shown how much they’ve grown in maturity, not needing my help as much with school work and being old enough and responsible enough to hang out around the island with friends and needing minimal adult supervision.  Most importantly, they are both healthy and happy, which is a very big deal, considering all they have been through the past several years.  One thing I have learned through it all is to take it one day at a time and enjoy every moment possible in the now, not worrying about the future until it comes. I’ve said this before in my blog, knowing it was right, but allowing myself to worry anyway, so now I am learning to really let go of that worry and fear about what might happen in the future because when I think I know what’s next, everything changes, and that’s okay…God’s in charge, keeping His children’s best interest always at heart.