Goodbye Old Home...Hello New Adventure

~ home fading, fading fast...but the memories here will forever last...~
108 Gregory Scott Sonycam

Gregory Scott Drive has been our home in North America for the past three years.

Jack, Sol and I came here in Spring of 2001. This is where we had our two beautiful children, Oona Gabriella in 2002 and Joshim Abraham in 2004. This is where I learned how to peel an apple top to bottom without stopping, handle raw meats without puking and how to separate the colored from the whites. This is where I realized that I can cook and clean and raise three kids...and still be alive at the end of the day.

This is where we have joyfully welcomed loved ones over from near and far. People we cherish have spent days and nights with us, sharing food, life stories, kidplay and housework here. We celebrated birthdays and weddings, comings and goings or simply being together here. People who have shared life's challenges with us, loved ones who added so much more color to our already colorful lives, always teaching, always sharing, always loving. To each and everyone of them, I am most thankful. Each one is a precious blessing from above.

This is where I experienced the changing seasons for the first time in my life. A most magnificent showing of God's glory. From my kitchen window, I have seen the weather change from sunny to rainy to snowy sometimes in a matter of minutes. From our backyard we saw birds come and go with the coming of the warm and cold, leaves change color from green to fiery red, trees go from lush, proud and full in the summer sun to nakedly swaying in the bitter autumn wind and finally surrendering to winter's slumber.

This is where I fell in and out and in love again with my husband so many times that I have lost count. This is where I fell in and out and in love again with myself countless times that it drove me insane.

Many a life lesson has been hatched here, heads and hearts thumped seemingly beyond repair, spirits strengthened beyond what I thought to be humanly possible.

But what matters the most to me is that love, unconditional, has blossomed here. Like the changing seasons my soul has gone through a million reincarnations as well.

To sum it all up, Gregory Scott Drive has been my house of horrors and my home of hoorays. I am grateful for every single moment, whether happy or horrific, spent here. Moments that have stretched, poked, grazed, molded and cut me in places and into a million pieces. Moments that have made me a human being more in tune with the reality of life and ultimately glued me back together again and fashioned me into something more wholesome and worthy of life's many adventures yet to come.

Goodbye, old home. May the next family who lives here be as blest as we have been under your roof. I will definitely miss your familiar rooms and corners and cupboards.




"...so it is with You and how You make me new
with every season's change,
and so it will be as You are recreating me,
Summer, Autumn, Winter, Spring.
"Every Season, Nichole Nordeman"
http://www.stlyrics.com/songs/n/nicholenordeman10711/everyseason343451.html

Love & Gratitude,
K.

Upcoming Wow-Days

~ Bora Tree ~

It is a tricky one, this finding balance in life. We live life as we walk, one step at a time. And with each step, we gain a new perspective. There are huge lessons about nurturing self, being kind to self, making self a priority-not to the exclusion of those we love but on a par with those commitments and with a recognition that, if OUR well is not full, nothing else is possible for us and we lose our capacity to contribute to others. – Ingrid Kincaid,
http://www.100words.net
member's name: silly mischief

I am counting the days. Approximately two more weeks to go, fourteen days, more or less, before we take that flight to my warm, sunny homeland in the South Pacific. All the chaos involved in sorting, packing, de-cluttering and packing some more gets easier to handle as long as I keep this vision crystal clear in my head ~

Hello, SPAaahhh days, beach bummin' and home-cooked food a la Mama Grandma days! Hello, beloved family slash extra hand days to take care of my babies! Hello beloved housekeepers and nanny days to make sure this tired Mama gets her much-needed rest for a change!

Hello, hello, hello and welcome to my wonderful world of WOW-DAYS!

All in my head, for now-days.

the big, bad, blah explained!

i found this good one on Jeff's journal today....from

Jenhttp://www.jengray.com

“There are natural highs, and lows, in winter. You eat more. You sleep more. It is only natural to put on a little fat, but I don’t like it. I want to go into winter, have its beauty and silence, and play by my rules., but it’s hard. And I’m so tired at the end of the day; as soon as it gets dark I’m bone-weary, almost in a stupor. It doesn’t matter whether I’ve been outside sawing logs or cross-country skiing all day, or just sitting inside by the window, typing and drinking tea – still I’m exhausted. I’m finally learning to savor it, just to stretch out by the fire and fall into slumber, into a sort of spinning, warm unconsciousness – all the chores done, or almost. I’m learning to understand and relish the sweet low of it, this necessary putting-off-until-tomorrow. The days are gradually, by minutes, getting longer, and soon I’ll be out of it, go full bore again, put on my city ways and do the work of three men – but these short, dark days are bigger than I am, larger than the chemical stirrings going on in the back of my brain, and I’ve learned that if I fight it, I’ll only be more tired the next day."
~Rick Bass

Creative Time

Time is a created thing. To say "I don't have time" is like saying "I don't want to..." - LAO TZU

This year, I will create time for the things that really matter in my life.
I will create time for things that I love to do, not just things that need to be done.
I will create time for people whom I cherish and make time to show them just how much I love and appreciate them.
Most importantly, I will create time to fuzz over and give extra loving care to the most important person in my life ~ ME.
Without "me-time", there won't be "others-time". One simply can not give what one does not have.
I create the time ~ to give, to cherish, to love, to appreciate, to fuzz over, to care.
I want to give.
Me first. Then to others.
I have the time.
I create it.


Lovely Baby Footsie TimeSonyDigicam

Good Days...Bad Days...

there are good days
there are bad days
and then there are the very bad days
like the one i just had
so i reach out
and i reach out some more
and i see i am not alone
and the day does not seem so bad after all.

"Smile more ~ even when you're feeling overwhelmed or at your wit's end, you can trick your body into a state of joy by holidng a smile on your face for at least thirty seconds. Try it right now." - Cheryl Richardson, Life Makeovers

this may help...

Allelujia Chorus

”Being with real people who warm us, who endorse and exalt our creativity, is essential to the flow of creative life. Otherwise we freeze. Nurture is a chorus of voices both from within and without that notices the state of a woman’s being, takes care to encourage it, and if necessary, gives comfort as well. I’m not certain how many friends one needs, but definitely one or two who thing your gift, whatever it may be, is pan de cielo, the bread of heaven. Every woman is entitled to an Allelujia Chorus.” – Clarissa Pinkola Estes ~ Women Who Run With The Wolves

My Allelujia Chorus ~

My sisters, Leslie and Joey
My Mom & Dad
My sisters-in-law, Mariam and Bahar
My JJ Tribe from the MMBs
My best galpal in Manila Tina A.
My best galpals in Toronto April, Milet,
My best galpals all over the world Tina D. AnnMarie, Cecile, Isabel, Myrna, GinnyLee
My cyberpals Debbie, Ingrid, Jen, Kevin, Allison, Tracy, Leonie
My favorite authors C.P. Estes, SARK, Maya Angelou
My darling husband, Jack
My darling kids, Sol, Oona, Joshim
My angel, J.

To each precious one, I sing ~ "Allelujia!"

In gratitude,
K

"The Day"

Solomon (1 week old) with first-time daddy, Jack
Lazy Sunday Morning
Makati, Philippines

My darling first-born came to life on September 4, 2000.

So did I.

Here's a link to Solomon Joshua's birth day .
This was the very first iMovie project I proudly and lovingly created on my iBook a few years ago.
I feel it's time to share it with you.
Promise, no gooey-eeky stuff was included in the production. LOL

If there's anything one is truly and whole-heartedly to be grateful for ~ it would be children.
The best lessons I've ever learned in my life were taught to me by my precious kids, Solomon~Oona~Joshim.

And a special dedication goes to my JJ Tribe to which I lovingly post this entry. They have been the magical "wind beneath my wings...".

ENJOY!

in gratitude,
Kat

100 Words by "Kathreen"

http://100words.net



100 words. I highly recommend it! Therapeutic in a most creative way... Click today's blog entry title to go.

Here are three of my favorite entries:

October 8, 2004 ~
There we stood holding on to each other tight. As if the mere act of letting go would make us fall into an abyss. We were each other’s life raft. There we were in the middle of this turbulent sea and the embrace was our island.

This moment was my reality check. A much needed reminder. A minute of feeling, smelling and remembering what brought us together to begin with. The chaos that is life has made me forgetful. A single moment of our bodies entwined brought back the cherished raison d'être, the sanity.

For a moment nothing else mattered.


October 2, 2004 ~
“I hate my life right now!”

It pinched. For the first few seconds, the pain was local. Negligible. Then, ever so slowly, it spread. Like some sneaky virus it started to consume me. What started pinching was now a throbbing mass in my head. My heart. My ego. It had nothing to do with me, I know that much. But my freaking ego is, as always, clueless to this reality.

It wants what it wants. Believes what it believes.

Now it wants to believe that the comment was all about her majesty.

“Oh, woe is me... ”, the song begins.

October 4, 2004 ~
Divine chaos, Deepak Chopra calls it.

But there is nothing divine about running around the house, still dressed in sleeping clothes at ten in the morning, trying to feed two noisy toddlers while pacifying a crying baby. Nothing divine in holding in toxic wastes in the gut since there is no time to unload, not yet. Nothing divine in remembering that there are no diapers for my girl and the baby is a month late for his vaccination schedules.

“Hello. It’s me. Joshim needs to get his shots, Oona has no diapers and I have to take a crap. Help.”

Divine-shmivine!