Monthly Archives: April 2015

Rituals and Love

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I picked up Juliana from school today, curious how she did with her jet lag and how she was feeling.  She did surprisingly well, although was a bit quieter and moved a little more slowly. She was definitely tired but made it to all her classes and appointments, after being up for 30+ hours straight.  I asked her if she wanted to take a nap, but she said she thought if she napped, she wouldn’t want to get up again.  I asked her if she wanted to go get a bubble tea, and her eyes sparkled and she woke up again. 

 We waited for Charlie and then drove across town for their favorite treat.  I love that she loves these and that I could spoil her. I’m trying to watch my calories so she ordered a large boba tea so I could have a sip or two. This was just right for me, as I got to share a drink with her and not have too much. 

 My mama drove up from Southern California to be with us this week and she arrived this afternoon, right before I picked up the kids. I was so happy that she got here safely, and that we got to spend the day together. I wanted her right by my side, doing everything together. We went to pick up the kids together, read magazines together, cooked dinner together, drove the kids to and from together, went to Target, ate dinner together and watched the end of the Warriors game together too. We laughed and joked and loved on each other and the kids and Jeff when he came home too. She is the most efficient, hardest worker I’ve ever known and I just admire her and all the love she has to give. I’m so thankful she’s here with us for a few days and that we can just BE, her and ME and the rest of the gang too, of course, doing whatever we do. 

  

Love this life. Love my family. Love my mama.

nAMaste

Day 7 – Juliana Home from Japan

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I am thankful that our baby girl returned home safely from Japan today.

We were up until 2am our time, texting back and forth until her plane departed from Tokyo.  I finally felt like I could rest but I was too anxious and kept waking up every couple of hours, wondering if she was okay and if her plane was still safe. 

I was thankful when her texts returned this morning letting me know she was almost on the ground and when she finally landed.  We were all at the airport waiting and anticipating her arrival, along with her friends and classmates. The feeling of homecoming was overwhelming and exciting. At the same time, I felt connected to my sister cousin and felt her pain knowing that her son was not coming home. It’s hard to feel complete joy now when I am aware of such pain. Yin and yang. We are all connected. As I was sharing her pain, she was sharing my joy. This is surreal to me. It’s our shared journey and reality. It’s real and makes me especially appreciate life and all that is good, despite all that is bad, every day. 

I am thankful for this one life and plan to continue living it up each day, celebrating and feeling and connecting and sharing and loving, good times and bad. 

nAMaste BeLoveRs and welcome home Juliana. 

  

Day 6 – Scott’s Valley

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Charlie had a soccer game today in Scott’s Valley. At first I was concerned about traveling for competitive soccer games, but today I was thankful for the opportunity.

I loved the drive down highway 17 and discovering a new part of the area that I would not have known about had we not had a game here.

The soccer field was surrounded by playgrounds, BMX bike trails, skateboard park, dog runs and a farmer’s market. We explored all around and enjoyed people watching, open space, and the cool breeze today.

   

While Charlie was warming up, we wandered over to the farmers market where we enjoyed breakfast and taking in the sites.

   

We came back afterwards to pick up a strawberry rhubarb pie and fresh caught fish and mixed greens for dinner on the grill tonight.

  

We bought ahi tuna, yellow tail, scallops, and steelhead trout. The flavors were delicios!

Life is good, especially when you slow down to enjoy it. I hope you had an enjoyable Saturday. Juliana comes home tomorrow from Japan and I am anxious and excited. 

nAMaste BeLoveRs

xoxoxo

 

We found happiness on the way home! 

Day 5 – Santa Cruz

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My happy place! I love the beach and just being there makes me happy.  

  

My favorite part today was people watching with my BFF and enjoying the kids just playing. It was sunny and windy so I was a bit cold and wore a sweatshirt the entire day.

Today I saw the beach as a place to build and create and connect. There are free, unlimited building materials everywhere and mixing sand and water is magical. I’ve never thought of it this before this way but today, watching the kids from 0-60 build and play and run and laugh made me smile. There was unlimited entertainment.

Our kids loved bringing big shovels and digging deep holes, making a man cave and a place to sit and hide. 

  

An older gentleman spent hours building a sand bridge. He was like the pied piper, with people coming around to see what he was doing.

Teens were jumping in the waves and then resting and digging for sand crabs, all together in a row. 

Our kids were making soccer fields and soccer hole goals and boundary lines and then playing a game together. They used their boogie boards for the back of the soccer goals and played and ran and shot and laughed and then went in the water to cool off.

They boogie boarded and enjoyed the cold water. They were brave and stayed together, laughing and jumping and riding the waves over and over again.

  

There were women flying kites and naked babies and little toddlers coming over to see what our kids were doing. There was kindness and teamwork and big boys sharing with little boys. There were little ones rolling over and over in the sand because they could.

There were seagulls stealing chip bags and protecting their territory, defending their loot from the other birds. This was so funny to watch.

We watched boats come in and out of the harbor and waves crashing on the rocks. We watched a police boat jet off and jet skiers following them as well and another boat that pulled a broken down boat back into the harbor.

There were volleyball players and football throwers and little ones running back and forth.

The beach is a beautiful place, filled with life and joy and movement.

  

  

This is my happy place!  Where is yours?

Tired Out!!

nAMaste

Day 4 – Spring Break in Alameda

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Today was a beautiful day. The weather was warm and we explored parts of Alameda, particularly the Pinball Museum with friends.

All of us had a great time playing old fashioned pinball machines for three hours!  This was a cool way to spend the day.  I was happy that the boys were entertained and weren’t longing for Ps4s or xBox games. 

   

      

Favorite game!

  

Sticking with the old fashioned theme, we stopped in at Foster Freeze for a hand dipped ice cream cone. This brought back so many memories from my childhood and begging my parents and aunts and uncles to take us to FF for summer comes.  

Yum!

Alameda is a quaint little town. We loved driving down the streets and admiring the old Victorian homes. We also loved watching all the people outside enjoying the day playing soccer, splashing in the water, fishing, walking dogs, climbing trees and running.  

East Bay

Exploring the rocks

  

Climbing trees

  

Soccer in the park

This was another day where we had one idea and it expanded and became so much more. We weren’t on a schedule and were open to explore whatever came our way.  I enjoyed FaceTiming Juliana again and including each other in our day.  All is well. 

Volcano in Japan

 

Life is good and I’m loving this break.

Tree lined streets in Alameda

We ended the day in Downtown San Jose for dinner at the Loft. It was absolutely delicious and a great way to end the day.

American bistro

Juliana mentioned that she liked seeing the American flags in my pictures and that flags are not as visibly noticeable in Japan.

Today was fun and I recommend visiting the Pinball Museum at least once.  

nAMaste 

Day 3 of Break

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hello BeLoveRs 

I just love that word –  how simple would the world be if we were happy just BEing? We could just BE Love in all its forms. We could BE Lovers of life, of ourselves and of others and of whatever we love. There’s the simple secret all wrapped into this pretty little made up word. I don’t think it’s a real word, is it?  But now it is to me and you.

Today I was happy just sitting outside doing nothing. I ate a late lunch out on the sunny back patio, all by myself. I talked to my sister about her nursing applications and was so happy that she was happy and on her way. I am proud of her. 

  

Soon Charlie came outside to be with me. We moved to the couch and just sat together for probably an hour with nothing to do and just enjoyed being. We laughed and sang made up songs and texted Juliana, exchanging pictures between what we were doing in the USA and what she was doing in Japan. 

 

He worked on putting baseball stickers all over his new toothbrush and he told me I’m the best mama and that he loves me. What more do I need?

 

I’ve learned that when you slow down and create space, really good things can happen. 

Finally on Day 3, I am happy that we are home for spring break. I enjoyed shopping with Charlie this morning and bringing Christian to his appointments and meeting Jeff for dinner in Mountain View and family FaceTiming with Juliana.  

  

These are the days that make up the simple life. These are the days that represent just being and going with the flow and create peace. These are our days.  Here I am.

nAMaste. Enjoy your days.

Fake Break

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We’re on spring break, but we’re not really taking a break, except for a break in our normal routine. This is really hard for me. I want to travel and go, go, go.  I’m not good at slow mo.  I mean I can slow down and appreciate the art of nothingness and doing less and all that good stuff, but it’s really hard for me.  I do like it, don’t get me wrong, but if there were 6 options to choose from, this would be my 6th choice.

I love that the kids are sleeping in and don’t have to rush anywhere. This is really cool. I am enjoying not making lunches and getting out of bed at 6 am, but I naturally wake up early anyway, so this isn’t a huge benefit for me, but definitely for the kids.

I did enjoy getting up and drinking a hot cup of coffee while the house is still and quiet, reading FaceBook updates, looking at magazines and watching the Today show, without any rush. This is cool.

I decided to celebrate spring break by not cooking this week. I’m pretending that we’re at a hotel and we can’t cook. This is making staying at home much more fun! It feels weird to NOT cook, but does make me feel a little less busy and does provide for a break from my normal routine. I told the boys that they were in charge of dinner this week.  I love to cook, but thinking about what to make and pleasing everyone takes work, and we’re on break, remember?  Me too.

Last night, this meant they ordered pizza. Really? I guess they don’t want to cook either.

Tonight, I left out sausages for them to grill and skipped dinner myself as I had to run to a meeting. When I came home, I heated up some left over steak bites and made mini lox bagel bites with capers. I don’t call this cooking, but it was definitely fun.

How do you create a break in your routine? How do you change things up when you can’t do something big? I’d love to hear your ideas. Go ahead. Inspire me.  😉

nAMaste.

Spring Break

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Spring break falls at different weeks all across California.  This week my kids are off from school and we are staying close to home for several reasons.

We spent the day at swim practice, spring cleaning and hanging with friends outdoors.

  

   

  

 

My kids are happy to not have a rigid schedule and having time to relax. It’s been a chill kinda day with work and play.  I loved the slower pace and the afternoon felt remarkably long with “nothing” to do! They had time to go for a walk, eat a leisurely lunch, play basketball and darts, and even watch a movie.  I also loved having time to sit with my friend and not having to rush anywhere. There’s something really good about just being home this week.


Life is good.

Small Infinities

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It’s the little things in life that bring me joy, yet sometimes I get stuck thinking we need to be doing bigger things, having shared experiences and seeing the world while we can.  I want to do it all.

I want to flow and I want to create opportunities and sometimes the yin and yang of this is confusing. 

I’m talking about spring break.  I wanted to plan a family trip together but my family had other plans.  They wanted to stay close to home for various reasons. I always want to go places, but I’m the one who is home the most so this makes sense. I want to go and they want to stay.

We were generously offered a week in Tahoe and we regretfully decided to decline. This was a hard decision for me, yet it was best for my family, and so it was. 

I love spending time with my favorite people, yet sometimes what they want to do is just to do nothing. They are happy to be home and relaxing doing what they do.  This is okay with me for a little while and then it drives me crazy. Except for today. 

Today I was thankful that they just wanted to chill. I decided to chill along with them, which means I did the dishes, and cleaned up the clutter again. I went through the stack of papers on my desk and made an updated to do list, and filed and shredded papers. While we were sitting together, Juliana FaceTimed from Japan and we all sat on the couch and shared stories. 

  

This made me incredibly happy and finally I could appreciate what Jeff likes to call the small infinities, those little things that mean everything. If we were busy running around, we may have missed the opportunity to all be together.

I was finally content to be at home and was happy that my paper stack dwindled.

I then began working on my photo backlog and Jeff helped me solve a problem, while we sat on the couch and watched Charlie play outside. This made me very happy!  This was another small infinity, that I would not have experienced if we were driving in a car some place or on vacation some where. 

The last little thing that made me happy just going with the flow, was when we decided to walk over to April’s house to pickup Charlie. It felt good to feel the sunshine on my face and the cool afternoon air, walking hand in hand. 

Love wins. Small infinities are sometimes just as good as big infinities. 

nAMaste – live it up – big or small and enjoy what is.

With love,

Adriana