Cookies, socks and winter activities - oh my 😝

Parsva Urdhva Hastasana - Upward Salute Side Bend Pose
Can you straighten your arms? All the way?

I am back in the kitchen with verve baking up a storm once again. Is it my new “easy bake oven” (air fryer)? Or the fact that my youngest is now three and slightly less underfoot? It is both I am sure, and other factors, too. (Chilly weather💨.) Whatever it is sparking my creative joy, I will run with it…as do my children and so should you! 🍪

Brownies, banana bread, oatmeal raisin balls, yogurt cake, sugar cookies, cream cheese frosting… biscuits, french fries, quiche, pigs in a blanket, pizza, grilled cheese, quesadillas, roasted (air fried) everything and the list goes on… I kid you not, these kids actually expect me to feed them EVERY DAY!!! 🤪

My daughter knits socks.  🧶 🧦 For MY feet. 😍🥰

& these adorable and refreshing Gen Alpha kids also sing, tinker on the piano, play violin, craft, craft, craft and, obviously, level-up our nestle chips. 🎻🌸🎉

Notes from my last flight

 

Notes taken in the air - originally in pen 🖊️ in a mini notebook 📓 — never, ever leave home without one. 

🩵💚Not to be forgotten when flying with kiddos 💛🧡

It will not always be easy

Virabhadrasana A - Warrior I Pose

Virabhadrasana A - Warrior I Pose

I birthed my four babies at home and I have always known intuitively never to speak about it in common company. When your life challenges conventional - conformist - foundational beliefs, the threatened masses will act out (and sometimes with virile hostility). Thinking ‘differently’ from the majority is a sure bet side effect of a consistent yoga practice and is mostly fun, but on occasion you will feel confused, misunderstood and alone (or even outcast and humiliated when you are the more outspoken type). Welcome to rare and lasting inner peace and outer beauty! No one said it would be easy. 💖

PS :  If you are not having these black sheep issues - get thee to more yoga classes! 🤭😋🙃

What are you building?

 

Eka Pada Raja Kapotasana - King Pigeon Pose in happy frenchie cool girl stripies

Eka Pada Raja Kapotasana - King Pigeon Pose

Add flourish to your asanas. 🐚 

Everyday around 10am, for eight days straight, our family of six, (with cousins in tow,) headed to the beach. My youngest, age 3, would promptly ask me to “build a road”. We scooped, dug, piled, grated, patted, and decorated gaping holes, super highways, winding rivers, picturesque villages, connecting tunnels, long islands, creepy faces, and even a giant sea serpent monster. What were we making? We never knew. We just kept constructing. 

🧜‍♀️🧜‍♀️Sea monsters🧜‍♂️🧜‍♂️

Observe

 

Malasana - Garland Pose starry ⭐️ bubbly 🫧 lovey 💕 dovey 🕊️ 

Malasana - Garland Pose

Sit back and watch the frenzied, delirious world do its thing whilst you do peaceful, casual yours. 

Buttermilk snow bunnies gone disco crazy 🐰 🪩 

Jingle all the way 🔔 

🌟 Starbaby 🌟

 

Yoga Mudrasana - Psychic Union Pose

Lotus legs, hands bound, third eye to the floor 🧿

🌈 How do you prepare for your birthday? ✨ 

Nowhere else I would rather be

Marichyasana III - Sage Marichi Pose 3, Seated Sage Twist With Bind C

The kiddos, or you, or both 😱 are sick and suddenly, without warning ones focus is single minded and undivided; nothing else matters. 🧿

Crunchy

Eka Pada Uttana Padasana - One Legged Raised Pose

I still slide my hands under my hips to support my lower back.

& Featuring what fun it is to be a hippie yogini (mommy).

PLASTIC - it’s everywhere!! I’m pretty sure my underwear is made of plastic. I am just so over plastic. & Chemicals. Unnatural clothing, bizarre body products. PLASTIC. …

Post-birth of each child I give myself a pass — the generosity to be gentle and relaxed with my otherwise crunchy ecological, home and health rules. (EG processed foods ordered in, tacky crafts or mittens overnighted in bulk.) But, youngest Bébé is now three, so I am no longer in ‘survival mode’ and am empowered - aka ruthless and rageful - against the world’s BS once again. 🐅 All crap must go.

Infinite

Ardha Padma Anantasana - Reclined Half Lotus Pose

Kubera Mudra for focused intention 

Sacrificing for your dream. Some days I look around (at my little life) and I feel overtaken with awe and immensely ‘blessed’. So much so, that the beauty of it can feel precarious (“too good to be true, so much to lose!”). But, as my husband elucidates, this life did not appear out of nowhere - myriads of sacrifices (countless other possibilities passed up) befalls when we make each choice. We are choosing one of infinite. So when the bliss is so joyous we panic, remember we had our hand in this; these are the steady and continuous - unprecarious - fruits of our labor. 🍇 

Destroyer of all diseases

 

Matsyasana - Fish Pose

Reduce stiffness in shoulders and neck. Improve posture. Balance the thyroid.

Self-compassionate healing après over-giving. 

What fresh hell is this?

Supta Baddha Konasana - Reclining Bound Angle 

With a bolster, two blocks and blankets.

OH the sheer agony of caring for the family and tending to the home while feeling unwell. We know it from periods, pregnancy, childbirth and postpartum, traumatic or sad events, the common cold, chronic illness, heartache, heartbreak and beyond. There is no relief to be found. My personal solution? Complain (and blame) loudly and incessantly until someone (my husband) tells me they feel sorry for me and then all is a little bit more right in my world - merci beaucoup, dankeschön. 

Head cold

 

Parsva Savasana - Side Lying Corpse Pose - Fetal Position

What is your illness telling you? STOP most of what you’re doing, get quiet & listen intent-ly.

My head is now submerged in what feels like a giant cotton ball and I’m hearing from my dis-ease that I’ve been consuming too much. Intaking kids’ equipment, junk food, other’s opinions, gossip, media, activity, meetings… throat, nose, ears and eyes are ailing. As I have been actively releasing much of this worldly influx as of late, I can also concur this is another important, physical step in the cleansing. ☁️ 

Course of inaction

 

Wake-up-got-nowhere-to-be-but-here is my 💛 preferred vibe. & what I am ⚡️ currently choosing. 

SuperCareGiverHeroStar 🌟

 

Utthita Eka Padasana -  Standing Balance, One Leg Raised

As I watched another woman caregiving today (I had a few hours away from my own supportive duties,) it stopped me dead in my tracks how important, beautiful, and fulfilling it is - the work of caring for others. On my end, rearing my children nonstop has felt demanding and intolerable as of late, but the image of this smiling lady pushing a grinning older gentleman in his wheelchair on our wooded path was just what I needed to startle me back into recognizing our shared guardian superstardom. 🌟 

Present parent, calm kids 🎁 

Babies ARE yoga

 

Ananda Balasana - Happy Baby Pose

FYI Kids don’t need yoga class — CHILDREN are our GURUS. 😻🧚‍♀️

❤️🤍💙July 4❤️🤍💙 with PHOTOS

 

⭐️ Star Pose ⭐️

❗️Parade & meet up with everyone I know to stroll

Luncheon at the Club

BBQ & Pool Party with extended family

Boat Ride on opposite town’s side

❓ Fireworks, or in fire country: Laser and Drone Show - visible from home 💥 🛌 

Late night House-party

God bless me — I may just choose 1 ❗️or 2❓ activities to commemorate the USA today 🤩 *

* update — Plan for very little and REALIZE so so much more !! - 

✔️Bike ride to parade with water fight 🔫💦 

✔️Locals ski club party 🎿 

✔️Romantic stroll and - shhh - some shopping 🎩 🤫

✔️Chic adults oyster lunch 🦪 

✔️While children ✔️Nap ✔️Bus ✔️Playground ✔️Bakery Etc.

✔️Family putt-putt ⛳️ 

✔️Quiet mountain and river play ~ nature-made boat races 🍃

✔️Drone show viewing from home 

✔️Movie night 🍿 

All with ease and energy to spare. ✌️ By making SPACE for MAGIC 🪄 

Happy Baby Steps

Ananda Balasana - surely the most cheerful pose to say 💛

There truly is enormous power in putting one teensy foot in front of the other in (even just pretty much) the right direction. 🎯 
 

Mommy Mommy Mommy Mommy Mommy Mommy

 

Asteroid cotton bloomers and top with extra crystals.

“Your children are not interruptions. They are your greatest work and the best investment of your time.”

- Elizabeth George, A Woman After God’s Own Heart

Rest in the arms of God

“…detach from the opinions and prizes of the world, and rest in the arms of God.”

- Marianne Williamson

To rest in the arms of God; in downright opposition of how I have been intellectually doing life for the previous two decades. The Truth hidden - from little me, at least - in plain sight. Luckily our Spirit always resides here and look how beautiful this existence is regardless of our silly superficial surface selves!

It’s irrefutable and indisputable (to this parent) that (our) children are God. It took the experience of creating, birthing, holding babies - at least 4 times! - for me to finally ask “if this is true, and they are God, then what am I?” 

Boys. Brothers. Babies. Buddhas.

flower child

Daisy: fresh, energetic, day's eye (the sun), darling.

Perennial; early Summer - early Autumn.

Aster, Marigold, Lily, Violet, Lavender, Sunflower, Bluebell, Daisy, Rose, Zinnia, Magnolia, Azalea, Chrysanthemum, Daphne, Jasmine, Ivy, Marguerite, Wisteria, Camellia ...

Names, decoration, motivation, muse, whim, notion, vision, introspection --- Look to Goddess Mother Nature's creations and you shall find it. When fancying inspiration there is no thing better suited than this natural phenomena. Flowers. Pure perfection. Heaven.

Violet, Aster, Marigold

(The baby has been channeling Daisy lately with her golden face and white hair; not to mention she often has bugs - even bees! - landing on her tresses, mistaking her for flora !!)