Haikus

Time for a little poetry from Autumn.

First up - Haikus:
Mom

she is super sweet

she takes care of everyone

she does everything. 

Dad,
he is very nice

he makes me laugh every day 

he does everything. 

Ivy, 
she is very nice, 

she gets everything all done,

she always works hard .

MeoMeo, 

she understands me, 

she is my stuffed animal, 

she is very nice. 

Dance

it is very fun, 

you can do different dances,  

you can do cool tricks.

Owen

he is annoying,

he can sometimes be funny, 

he is kind sometimes.

Roasting Marshmallows

I am not sure why it takes a quarantine to slow down and enjoy life.  It is so odd and fascinating to me that people need permission to relax, permission to be still, and permission to rest.  I keep seeing countless posts on Facebook about kids learning to cook, work in the yard, play games, and do all the things that people once did.  It almost feels like we all went back in time, and that isn't a bad thing.

Even here, with the new found permission to slow down, we sat around the new fire pit a few nights ago and roasted marshmallows.  I keep realizing that sometimes I am more scared to go back to normal than I am live in this time.  I worry my kids will say, "remember the quarantine time, that was so fun".  I worry I may say the same thing and with the permission taken away, we will just fall back into the life that we do because everyone is doing it.

I have no idea when this will end or what it looks like, but for now we have this and for this I am grateful.

School is Gone

It became official last week that school is out for the year.. well normal school.  We will still have online school, but regular school is gone.  Some parts of that make me happy and some parts of that make me sad.

These things make me sad:
1. 5th grade camp
2. 8th grade dance
3. Autumn spending more time with her teacher
4. Seeing the girls walk away in the morning one last time together
5. Getting to take official last day of school pictures
6. 5th grade celebration
7. The last day of school
8. The kids seeing their friends
9. Picking up Ivy for gym and seeing her walk out everyday
10. Having Owen call me everyday at the same time to tell me he is home
11. Taking both girls to school together
12. Science day
13. 8th grade bridging ceremony
14. Normal school

These things make me happy:
1. Not spending two more months with some people
2. Sleeping in
3. Staying up late and watching too many movies
4. Having the kids home with me everyday
3. Not caring about a bedtime (mostly)
4. Getting to have the kids home with me everyday
5. New ways of learning
6. Less scheduled life
7. Taking walks with the kids
8. Seeing the kids playing outside with each other
9. Random pictures on my camera
10. Getting to learn with the kids
11. Still being able to take pictures on the last day of school
12. Too many Mario games
13. Zoo videos
14. Journaling and making daily lists

I try to remember that for everything we are missing, we are getting something that we wouldn't have otherwise.

The Day I Almost Started on Fire

I started taking a meditation class last September, once a week for an hour an a half.  Right before the quarantine started, we went on a break for the teacher to go to Bali; however, plans change quickly when a mysterious virus enters your life and now we were able to continue online and keep our meditations going.  

During our classes, we had a few full moon ceremonies where we took a piece of paper and wrote down our intentions of things we wanted to let go of.  We took the paper, rolled it up, and then blew our essence and intentions into it.  Once we were ready, we lit the paper on fire, put it in sand and moved the smoke around us.  Other than feeling like I had no idea what to do in a group of people who seemed to know exactly what to do, it was a very powerful and moving class. 

Enter at home new moon ceremony.  

The first online meditation was around a new moon, meaning this time we were going to write down intentions that we wanted to bring into our life and conduct the same similar ceremony.   I gathered my gear, my yoga mat, a piece of paper, a pen, my Glassybabys, a lighter, and a shell to put the paper in and closed myself in my closet with dreams of meditation class being recreated.  

We sat, we breathed, we wrote down the things we wanted to draw into our lives during this time, and then we rolled it up and took a deep breath and blew into the paper.  I have no idea what I blew into my paper, but I must have had fire within because I lit my paper on fire and it instantly was engulfed into flames.  There I was in the closet, with the door closed, holding a burning piece of paper.  I could feel the flames getting hot and tried to put it in the shell.  It fell out and I quickly picked it up and realized that I was in the closet, by myself with strict instructions to the others not to bother me, holding a flaming piece of paper surrounded by highly flammable clothes.  I didn't know if I should drop it on the yoga mat or try to blow it out.  I envisioned trying to blow it out and igniting the flames more or blowing the flame onto my clothes.  

With no other option other than to light myself on fire, I took in a deep breath and blew it as hard as I could.  Ashes flew around the closet and into the blanket I was wrapped in, but the fire was extinguished.  Forget the meditation at that point.  My heart was racing with the realization I almost burned the house down and included myself in that.  

My lessons for next time are... don't use such a big paper, don't blow the energy of fire into my paper before I light it, and have water with me to extinguish the flames... cause I am still lighting the fire.