Vacation. Home.

Limbo sucks.

That's where I feel like I am right now. I don't think we've ever had to wait this long to move into a new home. Could be that I'm just an impatient woman. Instant gratification, that's me.

Maybe I suck.

But we've got a whole house to pack and cleaning to do and utilities to switch over and a Birthday party to celebrate and another Halloween party to plan, all before moving day. And Indy's Birthday is tomorrow!

My little monkey boy is going to be six! The magical age of six! Magical for both children and parents alike! They still love toys, Disneyland and their parents. The innocence is still alive, well and heart-warming. We must celebrate all week!

But today, we'll be packing and purging and trying to keep focused on having only the items that we really need and love, go into the boxes. If we can't see it as having a useful place in our new home, it's not coming with us. This seems to be our motto.

We used to have eight people in our home. We've asked four of them to not come with us.

Dan and I are both picturing the home that we've always wanted, the home that we always seem to vacation in, but never come back to. We love our Hawaiian/Asian/Zen-like spaces and have no problem unwinding in their calm, positive settings. In them, moments become moments again, and not just chunks of blurred time that somehow slipped away.

We want to take our shoes off at the door and leave the problems that we've tracked home on their soles, not ours.

Having twice as many people as we really should have living with us made it nearly impossible to not track in all kinds of muck, literally and figuratively. We just can't see that kind of stagnant, negative energy in our new space.

Clean, positive, inspirational, relaxing-these are the four descriptives that we think of when we imagine walking into our home. Somehow, we feel that this will be more possible with less people than before living in it.

Home, sweet uncrowded home.

The Bestest Presents Ever

What an amazing week. 

Some people don't have birthDAYS this good. I had an entire WEEK. 

Roosters for Zack's concert, 

LA for Patrick, Jenna, Santa Monica, Venice Beach and Nine Inch Nails, 

Indy's first day of school,

Amy and Jeremy's yacht wedding on the bay,

Sensei Rios' winning boxing match at the HP Pavilion,

Sensei Julaton's World Champion Title Win at the HP Pavilion,

3 Birthday cakes, 

Fenton's, 

and a partridge in a pair tree. What a week!! And we're still celebrating this Thursday, Friday, Saturday and Sunday!

I love my family and close friends. I love celebrating every little thing that comes along, because 

It isn't how many breaths we take, it's how many moments take our breath away.

A Piece of Cake

"If you want to be happy, be." ~ Henry David Thoreau

Someday, this Birth-week thing will take off and be as common to celebrate as birthdays are now. And I'll be responsible for starting it.

It's so easy to be happy, and not just when your birthday rolls around, but I'm still surprised at how many people find it easier to be miserable. Familiarity? Comfort zone? Laziness?

I get comments all the time about how people see that I'm "living life fully" and how I'm always doing something fun, or something cool, or how they "love my energy". Guess what? As Anais Nin puts it, "Life shrinks or expands in proportion to one's courage." Simply put, you get what you give.

All of the people that seem like they're having the time of their lives really are having the time of their lives, and it's not because these events just happened to fall into their pathways. Speaking for myself, I'm usually playing hard because I've worked hard to get to the playground. Good energy begets more good energy. 

Do we have bad days? Of course we do. Do unfortunate events happen to us? Of course they do. Do we feel sad? Yes. But we try to see the good in each situation and move on to create the next fortunate event. 

Why is this so hard for most people to understand? I really don't have time to analyze this any further. 

I'm getting some cake!!

Choose.

Every day I have two dogs fighting inside of me. One is good and one is bad. 

The one that's winning is the one that I feed most. 

Every day, every moment I get to make a choice: Am I gonna do what's right? Or am I gonna do what I want? Ideally, what I want should habitually reflect what's right. Ideally.

I'm not bi-polar. That's much too simple of a label for someone like me, and really, it's a cop-out. Undecided is not the same as bi-polar. Conflicted is not the same as bi-polar. Forgetful is nowhere near bi-polar. But these three describe the internal struggle that I'm facing each day, each hour, and on busy days, each moment.

I'm finding that it's hardest to choose what's right when I'm tired, or sad, or angry. And it's usually at these times when the need to make the right choice is most critical.

I'd like to be a master at taking a moment to breathe and think, first. In a world where rash decisions abound, and the populace is more accustomed to cleaning up the mess than they are at preventing the blowout, I'd like to be the calm in my own storm.