Happy Thanksgiving, Everyone!!!

I finally started our new blog, http://ourpieceofpeace.blogspot.com/

Wishing you all a happy and peaceful holiday with your family, loved ones and friends!!!

I started a new job in June and with a 1st grader, 4th grader and 8th grader in the house, it has been a little bit of an adjustment but at least I can say that I work with a lot of wonderful people who make the effort worthwhile!

I'm finally ok to realize that my favorite and most important job will always be the job of being a mommy!

The weather is far from a summer day here today, but for some reason this poem is in my head:

The Summer Day

Mary Oliver

Who made the world?
Who made the swan, and the black bear?
Who made the grasshopper?
This grasshopper, I mean-
the one who has flung herself out of the grass,
the one who is eating sugar out of my hand,
who is moving her jaws back and forth instead of up and down-
who is gazing around with her enormous and complicated eyes.
Now she lifts her pale forearms and thoroughly washes her face.
Now she snaps her wings open, and floats away.
I don't know exactly what a prayer is.
I do know how to pay attention, how to fall down
into the grass, how to kneel down in the grass,
how to be idle and blessed, how to stroll through the fields,
which is what I have been doing all day.
Tell me, what else should I have done?
Doesn't everything die at last, and too soon?
Tell me, what is it you plan to do
with your one wild and precious life?


Tell me...
what do you plan to do?
 I'm heading out to be with family for a few days of this wild and precious life...and wishing that more days could be spent in the presence of those dearest to me.  And that all of us had people in our lives who longed to be close to us.  Don't we all deserve that?

Happy Thanksgiving!  Peace!

In Good Health

Hard to believe it has been almost 3 months since my last post!  I hope everyone out there is well and am sending my best wishes to you all!

Trying to be my best, truest self has required a lot of internalization and going inside of myself and time to try to figure out.  Today's life is so full...full of good and full of bad.  So many distractions.  So many things to pull us in so many different directions.  Being quiet is a good way to shut that off and get to the heart of what you are really here for.  I'm still not there, but I'm trying.  I have found that pulling away from electronics has helped clear my mind about what is important in my life.  I also find that I miss the connections that are possible with electronic communication, so it is a balance I will continue to try to strike.

One big lesson that has hit me this month has been how grateful I am to have my health.  My whole family has been through some bouts of the flu and feeling at the opposite end of healthy.  When I think about people living with chronic conditions that they face day in and day out, it gives me great appreciation for the health that I have enjoyed in my life.

Gratitude has a way of helping me live in the moment and focus on the things that are important and meaningful to me.

There's a big part of blogging and the whole electronic communication scene that makes me a little uncomfortable and that is the idea of 'followers'.  I love every single one of you, but in my mind, you are 'sharers', 'fellow companions on the journey', 'seekers'....I don't know...anything but what the idea of 'follower' usually conjures up in my head since most of this stuff I babble about is more about me trying to grow and leave a legacy for my children rather than be 'followed'.  But whatever you are called, I'm very grateful that you are here in this space we share!

I hope to post more this year.  I hope to find my focus.  I hope to share positivity and light and gratitude more often than darkness.

My middle son loves to dance.  (Don't we all, really, somewhere inside of ourselves love to dance?)  This month he started back at the place that really grew his love of dance, The Dance Lab, in Moorestown, NJ with an absolutely beautiful teacher, Candace Carriger.  http://www.thedancelab.com/

Being there brings joy to my soul.  It is one of those moments in life when you know you are right where you are supposed to be and the time passes leaving you filled up and wanting for more.

I hope you are finding some of these moments in the start of this year and enjoying a piece of peace in your life.

Which brings me to a new blog I'm going to be starting with my family this year as part of our journey as Peace Seekers and members of The Mattie J.T. Stepanek Foundation's Peace Club (http://www.mattieonline.com):  http://ourpieceofpeace.blogspot.com - A place for my family to chronicle our journey with peace.  Of all of the things that are much-needed in our world, peace speaks to me as being at the heart of so many and being the solution to so much. 

Peace!