Rumi and a touch of fall

Out beyond ideas of
wrong-doing & right-doing

There is a field

I’ll meet you there

When the soul lies down in that

grass

the world too full to talk about.

Ideas, language, even the phrase,

each other

doesn’t make sense.

~Rumi

___________________________________________________________________________

Yesterday my camera found me in a small community garden a few blocks from my house searching out for signs of beauty within the foliage. The fall is coming and the leaves are turning gorgeous shades of every color. I love this time of year. The sun shining and casting shadows allow for the wild blues and purples on the leaves. I set my camera to the bluest white balance I could and to the ‘vivid’ color setting with lots of saturation and apeture set to f 2 (or somethings like that) and then just took pictures of anything and everything that caught my fancy. The photos above were some of my favorites.

Road trip to Edmonton

edmonton trip ‘09

Click on the picture above to see a small slide show of our trip.

We just got back from a great road trip to Edmonton. The 4 of us took 2 days to get there and drove aprox 6 hours each day with two 1 hour breaks interspersed. It was a grand adventure for us as a family of 4, as we haven’t ever done a trip like that- but after all is said and done, it was a success. As soon as we were leaving the city I think I sighed about 100 times, as it felt so good to get out into the country, on the open road and experience a slower pace. Don’t get me wrong, we had our moments of insanity, usually at the end of the 6 hour drive, where everyone wanted to get out and run around and never get back into the car… but oh man I love to travel! To change up the routines, to meet new people, to taste new foods, to see new sights, to meet old friends and visit dear family- Did I mention I love to travel?… I can’t wait till the next trip.

taking a closer look.

These pictures bring me so much joy. I took them last month on a walk I went on in my neighborhood using my mom’s 60mm macro lens. Wow, what a great lens and what an interesting experience. I literally didn’t go more then a block and a half away from my house and found hundreds of things to take pictures of that I had never seen before. I would go to a little spot that caught my attention and just crouch down as low as I could and just sit there, camera perched, looking into a whole different world I had never seen before. It was quite amazing, I felt kind of like I was looking into the ‘horton hears a who’ world.
As I was reflecting on this experience, it so related to the last month. My parents were visiting us from malaysia and as a family (individually) we were all doing therapy (in each our own way) to try and work through some major family issues. Did I mention it was intense? Well, intense in a good way of course. When are issues not intense I guess. Back to the metaphors! By us trying to work through our crap together, I borrowed my mom’s lens ( her perspective) and was able to look closer and see some beauty that I had never seen before that was right under my nose. Yes there is still lots more to work through and work on (probably for the rest of time as we know it), but I know that something changed this summer, some door opened that was previously shut locked and barred before. The door is open for more honesty. I know that doesn’t necessarily mean it will be any easier, but is life supposed to easy?
So for now I am left with the strange and wonderful beauty of these pictures, reminding me to look, look and look again even if I don’t see anything on the surface, there is ALWAYS something beautiful if I borrow someone else’s perspective and take a closer look.

grandparents

fewww, what a great time we had with grandma and grandpa (my parents). Their yearly summer visit has again concluded and now they are back off trotting around the globe to their home in Malaysia. We will miss them for sure, but indeed treasure all the wonderful times we had together over the last couple of weeks.
Will learning to walk with grandpa and shane.
Grandma showing the kids videos on youtube.
Grandma playing gummybear house with the big kids.
Grandma teaching olee how to wash our windows (since I never do .
Grandpa loving up fiona.
Grandma and Will having a moment.
Ice cream!
Hiking with Grandpa.
Grandma and Will getting their yearly dose of pattycake.
Waking up every morning to Grandpa working on his computer.
Will loving his gramps.
All of us sans erika and fiona at the Greater Vancouver Zoo.

sweet sweet summertime… See you next summer gram and gramps!

Hi everyone,
Time for a little blog break. I need to read some parenting books, watch some attachment parenting videos and take a pause.
See you soon,
Juliet

41 Conferences- Regional Baha’i Conference in Vancouver

This weekend was the big Regional Baha’i Conference here in Vancouver, as part of the 41 Baha’i conferences put on Worldwide by the Universal House of Justice of the Baha’i Faith. It was big. 3000+ people in attendance from BC and Alberta. It was amazing. So many dear friends were there that I got glimpses of from across the big ballroom, some I got a chance to talk to, others I did not because there were just soo many people and so little time!

Here is a great little video I just found on the net about the 41 conferences:

1)Dan and Fiona, 2)Laura and Fiona, 3) In the kids rooms

Going to a big conference with two young kids is a very different experience. I got a chance to listen to about 45 minutes of one of the talks, which was very inspiring, and then spent the rest of the morning in the kids rooms hanging out with the kids and seeing some friends as they would pass through. I am very thankful to have made it out to that part that I was able to attend, and know that in the future when the kids are older we will be able to participate more. But it was still really great and exciting to be there and just breathe in all the inspiration, love, excitement and Baha’i friends that were surrounding us.

Uncle Ryan from Edmonton came to the conference and stayed at our house last night. We love him soo much.

resolving to be adventurous

So it turns out that yesterdays day of tears by kid number 1 was from a number of factors.

1) Minor ear infection that was caught just in time. Putting a of drop of Nature’s Sunshine CBG into his ear 2x seemed to get rid of the infection really fast. Our herbalist told us about that remedy awhile ago and it seems to work for ear infections almost every time. (Except for the time olee had one so bad that we had to go to the hospital and eventually give him antibiotics).

2) Will has started crawling a few days ago… yes you heard me right, CRAWLING! 5 1/2 months! Well, it is more like an army scoot but the point is he can get from point A to point B all on his own, that means he can scoot over and knock down Olee’s toys and such (and no our house is not baby proofed for that yet! MARBLES!). He is not to fast yet so we can stop him before anything happens, but we are all entering into a new stage from it and Olee is having to adjust to that.

3) Will’s morning naps are starting to get all wonky and irregular and therefore Olee and my ‘Special Time’ is getting shorter. Olee and I usually have some time where just him and I play in the morning when Will takes his nap- the term ‘Special Time’ was coined by my niece Isabela. That time is like pure gold for Olee where he gets me all to himself. The second child moving into that space is definitely an adjustment!

So today I decided to be adventurous and get us out of the house. Luckily Will slept in a bit so we ditched the morning nap and went to Science World! Will was wide eyed and loving it the whole time as he LOVESSSS to do anything out of the house these days and Olee of course loves it there anytime. They have all sorts of movies playing there and since we usually don’t watch TV at home, we watched a video about how beavers make their lodges and some of the ‘Planet Earth’ video. At one point a wolf is chasing a little raindeer baby to eat him and Olee said, “Mom are they having a chase fight? oh, is the wolf trying to catch the baby lamb? oh, did the wolf catch the lamb?”. Yikes, luckily we didn’t see the wolf full out eating the raindeer baby… and luckily Olee knows that some animals eat other animals to survive, other wise that would be pretty traumatic!

And for a little color, black and white color that is, here is a picture from the archives of my parents holding newborn Will in the hospital the day after he was born, July 24th, 2008. So much wonderment, so much calm and peacefulness, so much love. I am feeling that today and thinking of family far away.

sleep and snow, what else is there in my life to talk about right now?

I feel like I have a milion things to blog about since the holidays and yet… no blog posts. Why you might ask? Well, just sit right down and I will tell you all about my favorite thing in the whole world to talk about, ‘SLEEP”. So simple, yet so amazingly profound… he he. Most of the conversations I have with other moms with similar aged kids always revolves around sleep at some point or another. Either they are sleeping good, or they are not sleeping well or a mix, but always about sleep. I know this is just a stage and in about 5 months when I turn into the sleep enforcer everything will be different. But for now, my brain is on Will’s teething schedule, and that means it is fuzzy, foggy, cloudy, tired or whatever adjective you wish to describe it. So slowing down on the blog posts, but that is okay. My sister and I joke about it, after one of the kids had a bad night of waking up alot, we say, “Okay, that means he is either teething, going through a growth spurt, learning a new skill, is colicky, is sick, or is just waking up alot or any combination of the above or all of the above”. Trying to figure out why is like trying to answer a multiple choice question on my university psychology exams, every answers sounds like the right one!

Here is a shot of my little drooler in drooling action:

I ‘just’ figured out (after a year!) how to use my old old (1969) Nikkor Nikon lenses on the D40 (which I just sold by the way, but that is for a different post). This is taken with a manual focus 55mm nikkor micro f3.5 (the lens is from circa late 1960’s). Apparently nikon made a ton of these lens and they are pretty cheap. My grandpa left it to me and my mom after he passed away. Or maybe just my mom and I hijacked it? I am not sure…

And just incase you are not sick of hearing about it (though you haven’t heard it from me because I haven’t been blogging- too busy shovelling with the garden shovel ), we have had LOTS of snow here. Snow and snow and more snow. For Vancouver standards the city was pretty much was snowed it. All of our snowplows were hired out by Surrey, Burnaby and the surrounding areas… There were no snowshovels to be seen anywhere. Why? because our city officials are masochists? maybe. Or maybe they all live in Surrey! Ha. Anyways, we were all un-prepared for that debacle, but now the whole snow drama is past history, as the rains have come and we are all free to go grocery shopping to our hearts content. YIPEEE! Did I mention that we now are the proud owners of 2 snow shovels? My husband wrote a beautiful post about snow in the city here. We were joking this morning that we have never been so happy to see the rain. And that’s funny if you have lived in Vancouver!

This photo was taken with a nikon D40 and 28mm f2.8 nikkor (circa late 1960’s aswell).

Okay time to go and SLEEP!!! happy ZZZZZZZ’s to all of you!

5 years…

And counting. Happy anniversary to us! Okay, it was on December 27th, but who’s counting anyway (definitely not my fluffy waking up all night to breastfeed my baby- brain)? We decided to celebrate it at a later date when we could do something fun in the evening with out the kids- that means whenever we can leave Will and Olee at home with a babysitter! Will is still breast feeding and waking up at night, so i don’t quite feel comfortable leaving him with someone yet (except shane who doesn’t mind the crying). I know most people would say, oh just go out for a couple of hours and do something, but when I go on a date I like to relax and not try to rush through it!

We took this picture about 7 weeks after Will was born. We have come along way together. Marriage is such a precious gift. I thank God every day for sending me such an amazing man. I look forward to the next 5 million years together!

I spruced up the black and white of this picture by following this advice and then put it on a black background in photoshop. What fun!