I was browsing the $5 value DVDs yesterday with my daughter and came across a copy of Footloose. Just seeing the cover made me giggle. If I’m not mistaken, the soundtrack to this movie was the first tape of “our” music at my home growing up. It wasn’t mine, it was my older sisters but it was like a rite of passage which is probably why I remember it. My daughter saw my distraction and asked what was up so I told her this movie just brought back a lot of memories for me. She asked what it was about and I told her basically it was about a boy who finds himself in a tiny town kicking back against the rules. The message that stands out the most in my mind from the show is the argument he uses against the preacher that there is a time and a season for everything, even dancing.

This is a message I’d like to get across to my children and the teens I work with. I’d like to really get them to see that there is a time for everything. It’s part of why I’m so passionate about charm school which focuses on this through decorum. To really understand this concept is to master self control and self-discipline. This is so important in a world that is screaming instant gratification all the time.

When I was recently asked to start teaching some charm school classes again, I began to form my own outline of the materials and knowledge I’ve acquired over the years. I broke it down into three basic keys that will unlock potential and open doors to really acquiring and mastering the art of charm. My three include:

1) Self Concept: Know Thyself
2) Appearance: The Power of Image
3) Social Interaction: Conquer or Crumble

As I compiled the list and organized some of my materials I realized again how critical the truth of everything having a time and season is. Now that I’ve had some personal experience in life I’m better able to compile these courses and their materials, things that I wouldn’t have been able to do as well a couple of decades ago. And so the story goes with so many things in my life, there is indeed a right time and season to many of life’s experiences. Figuring out what those are for you and not messing up the time line will result in greater happiness.

A good exercise for me was taking these three keys and applying the principle of times and seasons. For example, my level of self confidence is a direct reflection of my life’s experiences to date. Learning how to put them into perspective really helps me get a handle on who I am, how I feel about myself and what I want to become. And take appearance lessons: When I was a teenybopper it was in style to wear lots of layers, pushed up collars, leg warmers and big airings. It was the right time to wear such styles because that was the current trend, but if I tried to resurrect that appearance today it would be quite catastrophic. Equally valuable is the lesson that some clothing simply looks better on the young bodies it was designed for. And finally, there’s the social interaction piece where all these things come together. Think of all those movies or times when the awkwardness between an adult and teen were palpable because the parent or teacher was trying to be hip using current teen jargon.

There’s simply a time and season for everything. Instead of wishing for the good things from yesteryear, we should be embracing our current time and season growing and developing those appropriate traits and skills for where we are now. I guarantee you that down the road we’ll be looking back on where we are now the same way we do on our teen years. I don’t know about you, but I’d like to be able to look back and smile.

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Sometimes I feel that I could write endlessly about the experience of having no TV in our home. It’s amazing to me how much I’ve noticed, the little changes and big ones all from one decision. One of the things that I learned a long time ago is that you can’t simply remove things, they require replacement if you want success. It doesn’t matter if it’s thoughts, habits or tangible uses of time the rule is the same. So when we talked as a family about not paying any more for any TV to come to our home we also talked about the other things we could spend that money on. So today I share some of our tangible replacements and their enthusiastic reception.

Behold my last order from Oriental Trading: A full box of summer fun:

I splurged on the hoppity horse style bouncers. I remember these as a kid and my 5 year old begged and pleaded. But the delight was well worth it and we’ve all had hours of fun since their arrival. The kids were blown away that mom still knows how to bounce on them and even challenged a race.

They couldn’t wait for school to be out to dig into one of the activities, so I let it buy my Sunday afternoon Mother’s Day nap. It was a little rock and gem set. The kit included a brick with rocks and gems trapped inside the plaster brick. They had to chip away until they could remove the rocks and then could examine them with the little magnifier and identify them based on the poster that came with the set.

I love that my kids are enjoying spending their time doing things that are fun and educational and not just watching hours of TV programming that dulls their senses and whittles away at their morals. Another post for another day. *wink* Meanwhile, the suspense and anticipation of all the surprises in this box are treasured by this mom - almost as much fun as Christmas.

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We had a busy weekend at my house. We spent most of Saturday in the yard. It was time to harvest the winter garden and replant, and the palm trees were ready for another trim too. I wanted to share pictures, but by the time we were in it I was far too muddy and messy to grab the camera let alone use it. But I have some before and after shots of some garden spots:

The three rows of produce you can see in the first photo included carrots, spinach and green onions. The half row of green onion filled two gallon bags when cleaned and cut. While I’m sure I’ll never get through them all, I’m sure some neighbors will be happy to receive some spoils. *wink* The spinach was wonderful to enjoy fresh while it lasted and these two rows of carrots gave us 6 gallons of work to pull, top, peel and slice. I couldn’t have done it without the family’s help. My son (who is still calling days ‘weeks’) exclaimed happily while we were washing and topping the pile, “This is a GREAT week!” Which translated, roughly means “I’m having a great time today!” I had to agree as to me there is nothing better than spending quality time working or playing together as a family. There is still the final phase of storage waiting for me with the carrots, but the hard part is done.

My little garden spot is finally getting to the point where something can grow in this harsh Arizona ground. It’s a lot of work! And it gives me greater appreciation for my pioneer ancestors who had to put so much into the development of land to grow things and become productive. Within a few more plantings I expect things will be almost right as roots continue to break up the hard soil underneath and I continue to feed the top soil with needed nutrients and fertilizer. But work is good and I’m grateful for the lessons it’s helping me teach my family.

Blake toiled long and hard with a volunteer palm that decided to take root right next to the corner of the house. It was growing so quickly that we had to cut it down. Hats off to him doing it the old fashioned way with nothing more than a handsaw. That was hard work! The middle section has popped up in the past couple of days which we’re speculating may be because the outside is drying so much faster but we really have no idea.

And here’s the last of the pictures I have to share of my small flower bed behind the house. The pictures are only about 4 weeks or so apart. I love this time of year when so much is in bloom here and so pretty to look at.

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Several months ago I posted about my friend and her daughter who were contestants on NBC’s The Biggest Loser.

Today I checked out their website and was so excited to see that Ali did it! She is the first female to win the competition and she looks AWESOME!

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It seems to be human nature to not truly appreciate what you have until you don’t have it. It doesn’t seem to matter so much whether you ever really had what you now want either, although if you’ve had and lost you know first hand what it was like which can certainly add to the longing. Sometimes it’s even the perception that you thought you had it, when in fact you never really did. Either way the result is the same, you simply appreciate things more if you associate a form of loss with it before.

This morning I stopped to visit with another mom at my son’s school. I have to admit that I don’t know her name or anything about her really. We’ve exchanged a few friendly smiles and hellos on the playground before school starts for our Kindergarten sons. Recently, she’s been coming in a wheelchair and with some assistance, again I don’t know what the circumstances are but I know my heart aches for her. So this morning when we met at the crosswalk on the way back to our cars I asked her how she was doing and she replied that she was hanging in there. I could hear the weight of it in her voice and I told her how seeing her reminded me of myself about 5 years ago when I too was in a wheelchair. And then the entire drive home I considered how blessed I truly am.

I pondered on three primary elements of my life where I got to experience what I’ll call the “Greater Appreciation Algorithm” or GAA for short. (How’s that for pithy?!) The first, thanks to my friend, was my health and ability to walk. This in turn leads to the greatest gift of how you view and thus live your life. Dealing with unknowns is terrifying and lonely, even when you’re surrounded by loved ones. During the three months I battled some bizarre and never defined illness, I experienced some deep soul searching and gratitude training. I learned to be grateful for pain because it meant I could still feel and was still alive. I learned to be grateful for the many years of unfettered freedom and health I’d enjoyed without notice. Consequently, I don’t view life the same way anymore, I recognize each day as the gift that it is determined to make the most of it. There are no certainties; you make the most of what you’ve got while you’ve got it or you die on a bed of regrets. Life is too short for petty offenses, too fragile for postmortems and too wonderful for despair. How grateful I am to have learned this all important lesson before I was 30.

The next thing I thought about was one of those perceived items; the ability to become a parent. Suffice it to say that control in all things parenting from becoming to being one is an illusion. The GAA part of this experience for me is the ability to be a better parent, to recognize more. One woman compared this to experiencing children more on the level of a grandparent because you have different eyes and understanding. There’s some truth in there. At any rate, I find myself being supremely grateful for these parenting eyes even though obtaining them wasn’t something I was so sure I was on board with during the trial and wait. And I am especially mindful of the blessing that the vision was granted before I had children so I could make the most of the short time I have them.

And finally I couldn’t help but consider the blessing of all things temporal. At the height of my personal health trial came the greatest financial storm of my marriage. My husband and I were so close to the edge of losing everything that to remember now still causes my heart to skip a beat. Up to this point, we felt a level of control and confidence in our temporal situation. We were putting money away in a few different retirement and savings programs, paying more than minimum on our consumer debt payments, making conservative big decisions on our home and cars, and enjoying the freedoms of being your own boss. Sounds great right? It was, right up to the point where the revenue stopped, and I do mean stopped - no trickling, no bleeding, just plain gone. Oh, and now we had a mountain of medical bills too. For six months we plugged holes, depleted resources and extended every ounce of credit waiting and hoping for a new job to be in the cards. Not surprising, the climb out of that hole was no small task. But you know what? You keep climbing. No bankruptcy was declared, bills were paid and life continued albeit a bit strained for a while. And what I learned from all of it was that there is a difference in managing your money and in really having money to manage. I learned that money is not just some means to an end, it is a blessing and a gift that enhances your life if you let it. I learned that perception is everything and I learned it before I was 40.

So you see why I consider myself thrice blessed. Each of these primary areas are major aspects of life and I can’t imagine living my life without the gifts of knowledge that are now mine. This morning I thank the sweet lady that comes to school in a wheelchair each day to see her son off. She is an important reminder of just how blessed I am and sometimes you need the reminder. Maybe there really is something to the “gaa gaa” thing. *wink*

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I’ve been a bit reflective lately, surprising I know. *snort* I’m seeing with more and more clarity how we create our own realities, frame our own expectations and then our very lives based on those thoughts and feelings.

This sounds supremely simple, yet every day the energies and resources spent refuting the truth are insurmountable. For what I hear everyday around me are phrases like: “Well, they’re just a jerk”, “The economy is in the tank so things are bad right now”, “I have no control over that”, “I guess this is just the trial I’m suppose to be going through right now”, “It’s not my fault”, on and on and on. The words shift but the meaning is always there, responsibility is always to be found elsewhere and there’s an excuse for everything, especially when it involves work.

Can you imagine how different things would be if instead of sowing seeds of negativity, victimization and redirects we spent more energy sowing seeds of positivity, empowerment and responsibility?

Yesterday I spent a few minutes reading some of the book “All I Really Needed To Know I Learned in Kindergarten” by Robert Fulghum. I’ve always enjoyed his writings and find re-reading them gives my spirits a little boost. Specific to the thoughts I’m sharing today, the concept of “Clean up your own mess” as one of his lessons fits perfectly. The seeds that are being sown too often and the fruits they bear are those of irresponsibility. Not only do we not recognize that the pickle we’re in is most often direct result of our own making, we expend valuable energy and resources justifying why it’s not our mess to clean up instead of just digging in and getting the job done.

Another common thread I’ve observed is how easy it seems to be to find and see this truth in the lives of others while dismissing ourselves. It’s usually more subtle but it’s still there. I see it manifest in discussions where I hear someone describe a specific problem and then turn it into a spiritual matter saying that faith and prayer will solve it for them. Of course, it’s not said that directly but that’s what I hear. Sadly, people with this attitude will never understand the concept of an answered prayer. For they will not recognize any answer that doesn’t suit them just as my 5 year old fights against every “no” he receives. Hopefully he’ll learn the lesson and carry it with him, hopefully he won’t forget that just because the answer isn’t what you wanted or expected doesn’t mean the answer wasn’t given or isn’t there.

For the past 5 years my husband and I have been implementing, to the best of our ability, a life of personal responsibility, positive affirmations and hard work. We stopped finding fault with circumstances and praying for a rescue from the financial storm we steered our ship into. We stopped using the crutch of uncontrollable health issues and September 11th aftermath as the reasons for our being in the eye of the storm. It didn’t matter because we were in the storm and while these things may have hastened our arrival, our course was set before they hit. Besides that, focusing our energies there sure wouldn’t help us get out of the storm. Not surprising, the journey out of the storm was proportionate in time to our getting into it the first place. There was no single miracle that pulled us out and dropped us on a sunny beach. However, there were daily miracles and daily progress. In fact, things have been beyond good for us, especially within the past couple years and they are growing every day. It’s not free, it’s not easy, it’s not luck. We just started sowing different seeds and now we’re enjoying a very different garden full of variety and sweetness.

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I couldn’t do this in Idaho, not this time of year anyway.

My 5 year old son was so delighted to help me pick and shell the peas that he kept exclaiming what a good farmer he was. He’d pop as many in his mouth as he’d drop in the bowl and that delights me given that he once threw up a bite of carrots just to prove to me how much hated them.

I love the helping stage he’s in and especially helping with garden and yard stuff. I grew up with that element and I’m grateful to have it to any degree in my kid’s lives. It’s wonderful for kids to plant a seed, help it grow, keep the weeds from it and then enjoy the fruits of their labors. In our world today there are so few accomplishments that we can see and touch. I love teaching my kids the important lessons gardening can provide and I love that I have kids who enjoy learning them.

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A few weeks ago we took our kids to see the movie, The Spiderwick Chronicles. It was a little scarier than I was expecting and my five year old son quickly found his way to dad’s lap during some of the more intense scenes, but overall it was a fun movie that we all enjoyed. There are many things that come to mind about concepts shared in the film and real life experiences I can relate them to. Maybe I’ll write more about some of those later, but for today I wanted to share the one about protective barriers.

One of the concepts from the movie that has helped me a great deal recently as a parent is the concept of the protective circle. In the movie, there is a spell used that results in a circle of magical toadstools around the house. This creates an invisible shield preventing any of the unwanted and unkind magical creatures from entering the home. In short, it keeps the contents and inhabitants of the home safe from harm. For the majority of the movie this circle is able to perform its job flawlessly but toward the end the adversary finds a way to break the spell and penetrate the circle.

I loved being able to use this visual with teaching my children the importance of creating and maintaining protective circles for our family. I shared how every day they go out into the world and are assailed by a myriad of dangers - most of which they cannot see. Yet even though they go unseen they are very real and can do much harm if allowed. My kids seemed to really like this idea of a protective circle around our home keeping them safe and providing them security. But what I appreciated most was using this analogy to help them see the reasons for some of our recent parenting decisions, especially that of turning off the television several months ago. Up to this point it was hard for them to understand that it wasn’t a punishment, try as we might they still felt utterly deprived and couldn’t comprehend why we didn’t want it in our home anymore. I can’t blame them because we were careful about what we watched on T.V. even when we had it and none of us watched it a lot, so it’s not like they could immediately associate bad influences or feelings from it. But when I told them that what I’ve noticed so much since we removed it is how it was like a door or window in our protective circle, that it presented an invitation to the evils and dangers of the outside world into our home - our very own living room - they seemed to catch a glimmer of the concept. I told them the biggest danger is how subtle it really is because I didn’t clearly see or recognize it until it was no longer there.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m not saying that T.V. is evil and we should all ban it, but I am acknowledging the influence it has on us as well as the use of our time. I’m trying so hard to teach my kids the kinds of values and morals that I feel are important: modesty, morality, honesty, kindness, gratitude, and work to name a few. It’s a daunting task as I’m still working on all of these traits myself! Yet, if you look at just those I listed you quickly see how the majority of all programming counters every single one at various levels constantly displaying images, stories, action and drama of their opposites and at the very least takes claim to the time we might spend working on other things. I don’t need that kind of help. The danger with this device is how gloriously subtle and addicting it is. The beauty is how one simple decision could have such a powerful and positive impact on our family. We still have plenty of influences in our home, in fact my daughter still watches the occasional show of her favorite Disney series online, we still have movies and video games and we obviously still go to the movies but by removing the constant presence of the T.V. we strengthened our family’s protective circle. Who knew?

There are countless other protective circles and security measures we as parents need to address today. What are some of the ones you’re working on?

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Success is brewing. I didn’t get back to my computer the way I thought I would this week - hence the rocky start because that really means I spent most of my valuable computer time catching up on e-mails and GoogleReader. Moreover, on Wednesday I sat down only to find a broken Internet connection which didn’t get fixed until yesterday. I can live without almost anything but to lose my connection online is like suffering double limb amputation! It’s all good now as things are back in place. On the bright side I’m looking back at some immediate successes and getting fueled for some fun success in 2008.

1) I got an entire script written for a group of over 30 youth in an upcoming youth cultural arts night
2) Had at least 3 fabulous food successes in the last week
3) Spent quality time with my kiddos and spouse
4) Got all the laundry caught up and the bedding washed/changed
5) Cleaned up my computer from old files and programs and loaded my new Adobe programs
6) Got my entire e-mail box cleaned up and archived and my blog reading caught up
7) Beat my highest bowling score of all time with the Wii this week *big smile*
8) Came up with several new ideas and goals regarding my blog for 2008
9) Found out how to make my fonts in Firefox look normal
10) Had an encouraging visit with my hubby last night about potential changes in the future - very exciting!

So now I’m ready to jump in and get things moving! As long as I’m sharing successes, I’ll have to post a little more on the ultimate success for neighbor Christmas gifts this year…the personalized soap dispensers. These were an absolute hit and so incredibly easy! Click here for the pdf file with instructions and tips, or Click here for an editable Word 2007 file.

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I’ve gotten most of the Christmas projects done, thanks to the push of the mailing packages time line. But I still had a few ideas for simple food items in mind to finish off the neighbor gifts. I was going to do some small bags of half dipped chocolate pretzels, maybe a jar of homemade jam or syrup, or a few simple baked goodies to go with the personalized soap pumps for neighbors but somehow the energy really starts to drizzle at this point in the game for me. And then I had two unexpected and simple successes yesterday.

The First: Class Gift Bags

He wanted to do something for his classmates, all 17 of them. I needed simplicity as well as an activity that would keep him busy. So I stopped on the way home from school yesterday to get some pretzels for the half dip. He also picked out some tissue paper for wrapping. When we got home I showed him how to dip half the pretzel in the melted chocolate and then he sprinkled them with red sugar crystals. He loved it and did it all by himself.

Then he cut out plain strips of tissue paper and crinkled it up to go inside some little snack bags.

He counted out some Santa chocolates and put 4 pretzels in small sucker bags to stuff all the bags.

He sat on my lap and typed in a Christmas greeting and picked out a picture. Then he helped me tape on ribbon to each and we stapled them to the bags.

He was so pleased with himself and loved handing them out today being sure to tell all his classmates how special they were because he made them all himself! It was the perfect activity for a 5 year old including dipping, cutting, counting, typing and taping. Better yet was the whole thing took less than an hour. Happy kid, happy mom.

The Second: Happy Homemade Solution

As the energy dwindles for doing anything more, I thought about what I really wanted to learn how to make - English Toffee. I love the stuff. I thought earlier in the year I’d tackle more homemade chocolates but that was when talk was easy and ideas sounded simple. So yesterday I sat down and Googled “homemade toffee” and clicked on this link: Awesome Homemade Toffee. I read the following and thought surely it couldn’t be THAT simple:

1 pound butter
1/2 cup water
2 cups sugar
1 teaspoon salt
16 ounces milk chocolate chips

But it was! I already had all the ingredients (by the way, the milk chocolate chips were perfect for melting and dipping too!) My first ever batch turned out wonderful. As I looked at my pretty glass jars I saw the perfect solution - putting the toffee in the jars. Voila! One batch made 10 jars!

I think I just came up with a new Christmas gift tradition/solution for years to come. *wink*

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