Tuesday, October 23, 2012

Moving on...to Wordpress :)

Hey everybody!  Just wanted to swing by and let you all know(especially my new followers;) that I moved my entire blog to wordpress!  I know, annoying for you, but it gives me a lot more customizing options than blogger, and, well...I want my blog to be prettier.  It will take me a while to figure out, for sure, but be patient and you will get to read lots more of the goodness that you've been reading here.  I will keep this blog up for a while just because I have a lot of posts that get hit often and don't want to make them inaccessible until they have all been indexed into my new blog.

Check me out at myalternativelifeblog.wordpress.com!

Sunday, October 21, 2012

Its Raining Sunshine

Does anyone else feel like life just gets better as you get older?  I feel like I am ripening like a good wine.  My twenties have done WONDERS for me, or maybe I have done wonders in my twenties.  Whatever...life is good!
(I am literally listening to this song as I blog:)
Once upon a time I watched a movie called The Secret, and even though it resonated with me and seemed awesome I didn't like how the message seemed to be centered on money.  "You can make as much money as you want and live in your dream house!"  Yeah, "whatever" says the girl who grew up poor and married a boy who grew up poor.  Poor was our destiny, and this "secret" was just a rich person telling you how easy it is to make money.  Not so easy for us poor folk.  Can I get a "I hear ya" from the poor folk in the audience?  

So I lived my life, and we just focused on making our kids lives as rich as we could.  My husband got this job right before we got married because his boss found his resume online and we thought God had to be smiling on us, even though the job only paid $10 an hour and offered no insurance.  When you are 19 and don't have a college degree you think this is awesome!  We had this idea that you have to work really really hard to make lots of money, and part of that working was going to college for at least 4 years, but better if its 6-8 years.  This is why the secret seemed so hokey to us.  We didn't want to spend that much of our lives doing something that didn't bring us any happiness even though it might "someday" offer financial security.  We had 3 kids, found a program where we could build a brand new house(which seemed like a miracle at the time), and life was great!  

Life is still great, and let me tell you why.  My life has been what I have wanted it to be, and now I am wanting bigger and better things and they are HAPPENING!  The Law of Attraction is no joke, neither is the power of positive thinking.  I had this poor mentality when I watched it and couldn't believe that I could ever have the house of my dreams, or travel the world, or have Aaron work from home.  I had this idea that money was bad and wanting money was bad.  Money is simply a means to an end.  It is a resource that can bring you the things you want and need in life.  My belief about money was stopping me from ever making any!  So much of what we want out of life, experiences really, take money to achieve.
Anyone who has been following my blog is witnessing my life changing in slow motion.  I am finding resources to help me achieve what I want in life and couldn't be more excited about it!  I know that looking at my life things don't look any different, but it starts with your thoughts.  If you don't ever think differently nothing different will ever happen, so here I am, thinking bigger and better and bigger and better is happening.  It feels like its been happening for a while, because I have been having these thoughts for about a year now, but I am beginning to see differences.  I have made some awesome new friends that fit in perfectly with my ideas and that is why it is Raining Sunshine today.

I still have some work left to do, but when you are excited about it, is it really work?  

Have you, or do you still have thoughts that are holding you back?  Are your thoughts leading you to a happy life? If not, start re-evaluating what you believe.  
Its a simple as that. :)

Friday, October 19, 2012

5 Teeth in 3 days

So, those of you who are friends of mine on Facebook probably saw my post about Vaeh's tooth.  6 months ago at her check up and cleaning the dentist informed us that her bottom teeth were loose enough to come out soon, and her top teeth soon after the bottom.  At first, I was excited and encouraged her to wiggle them  so they would come out.  She showed absolutely no interest and we all but forgot she even had loose teeth.  Then, just randomly a few nights ago she was eating raw potato slices and it just popped right out!  

The look on her face was a bit shocked.  She showed me, and we all got really excited about her new milestone.  We wanted to take pictures, tell her to put her tooth in an envelope and put it under her pillow, hugging her, etc.  After about 5 minuted of excitement I finally take notice of her feelings instead of mine and see she doesn't look happy.  I ask her what's wrong and she beings to cry.  I know what's wrong. I never really explained much about loosing your baby teeth, when it happens, why it happens, and that its totally normal. Parent Fail! Anyone else feel like they are constantly failing their first born?

So I empathized with her, and then we talked about the ins and outs of loosing teeth.  We looked at pictures, watched youtube videos, and she was beginning to feel more and more comfortable with the idea of loosing more teeth, especially when she woke in the morning to find money under her pillow.


Life was good and I made myself a mental note to have a very in depth talk with her about her changing body so we didn't have another terribly anxious moment where she thinks her body is broken.  We had one glorious day where Vaeh was exploring her new look, new ways to eat around the new hole in her mouth, and new found confidence in her body.  Now you may be thinking she was so confident that she decided to wiggle the rest of those teeth out herself, right?  Oh, not even close.

So...I have two boys, and if you have boys you know they like to wrestle and play rough.  And since Vaeh is  such an awesome older sister she wrestles with them.  Vaeh and Joby were taking turns running into each other that would push one of them into the couch.  They had pillows, and though I did think it could turn ugly if they weren't careful I gave them one short disclaimer and decided to trust them to work out for themselves how to regulate the roughness of their play.  Well, after about 10 minutes Vaeh looked away and Joby ran at her.  Right as she looked at him(unrepared) his head collided with her front teeth.  I heard it and knew it wasn't good.  Vaeh's mouth was bleeding pretty bad and her teeth looked drastically different.  

We were on our way to the dentist in 15 minutes.  After a quick x-ray the prognosis was to pull the damaged teeth.  The impact of the hit was hard enough to knock her teeth down and back.  They were badly bruised and the easiest way to fix it, since they were all already loose was to pull them.  I knew she would be heart broken to hear that just  a day after loosing one she would now have to adjust to loosing 4 more.  The procedure itself was awful.  I may have cried, Vaeh for sure cried, screamed at times, even with laughing gas and being numbed.  Pretty sure we took her to Wal-Mart after and spoiled her with goodies and snuggled her all through the night.

5 teeth in three days. :(  Although she is now $25 richer, I wish I could have spared her the agony she had to go through to get it.  I'm sure she would rather have her teeth than the money.  When she woke up this morning I was brace for her being devastated, and she was smiling.  The resiliency of the human spirit is amazing!  She is chipper and happy, and it just goes to show that your life really is about your attitude and perspective. 

Its so hard to be a parent and watch your child cry and have hard times without being able to do anything but hold them and be there for them.  As a parent I want to protect her and solve all her problems, but the best part is watching them pick themselves up, dust themselves off and move on and make the best of their lives.  She doesn't need me to solve her problems, because she can solve her own problems! Sometimes she needs guidance to solve her problems, but she always does the actual fixing.  It is fantastic to realize these kids are so capable and strong and resilient!  More often than not I feel like they influence me more than I influence them.

We suffer traumas all the time, whether it be small or large, and what we decide to do from there makes all the difference.

Do you feel like your kids have taught you more than you have taught them?  Its kind of a recurrent theme for me.:)

~Have a Happy Weekend~


Monday, October 15, 2012

Everybody has a dark side...

Here it is, 3 am, and I find myself on the internet, blogging, instead of sleeping.  Why?  Ugh, I won't bore you with the details.  Let's just say a lot of anxiety.  This is not really a common thing for me. I usually feel in control of my life, like I am living it, instead of life just happening to me. When things go your way, its easy to be happy about it, but what about when things happen that are out of your control?  That is kind of what I am going through right now.  No worries people, things are fine, really, this is just me processing my thoughts so I can keep it that way.  

There is this side of me; I like to refer to her as the real me, that is confident, smart, sexy, capable, beautiful, and when I say beautiful I am talking so beautiful on the inside that it radiates on the outside, kind, compassionate, fun, basically every good thing you can think of.  She is awesome and she can do anything she puts her mind to!  Seriously, this is a girl you want to know and be friends with.  Then there is this other side... you see where I'm going with this?  Thanks to Kelly Clarkson's new song that I've been diggin' lately I will refer to her as my dark side.  This girl is insecure, ugly, not good enough, stupid, mean, selfish, etc, etc.  

This post is kind of personal, but the reason I am posting it is because I feel like this is such a common struggle with everyone.  I refer to it as real me, and dark me, but it is just the struggle of dark and light.  Who here has seen the cartoons, or movies where someone is trying to make a decision and they have an angel and a devil on each shoulder trying to influence them? 
Same thing, this is just my own personal perspective.  Instead of the devil telling you to do something bad, it is critical and harsh.  I guess it would probably be the one to tell you to do "bad" things too, but I personally feel like I have a pretty good grasp on morality so my dark side is primarily self destructive.

So the real me?  I don't call it that by accident.  I call it the real me because it is the real me.  This is who I was born as.  It is who we all were born as.  All that dark stuff is learned. Call me an optimistic, but I don't believe anyone is born dark.  We learn to second guess ourselves, that we aren't good enough, that we aren't smart, etc, etc.  I won't go into the details of how because I talk about that a lot.  Look up my posts on Peaceful Parenting and maybe that will give you a clue.  

Where do I go from here then?  How do I get rid of all the gunk and let the real me shine?  There are plenty of good books on the subject, but my favorite is The Four Agreements by Don Miguel Ruiz.  It is a very short, simple and to the point read that I highly recommend.  Reading books is only a start though.  I know a guy who reads plenty of self help books who is still a mess because he doesn't apply any of it.  For me, I nurture the real me.  I remind myself that these dark thoughts and actions are a lie and that they don't serve me.  I write a blog post to process my thoughts on the subject. ;)  Here is a really great article I just read on giving up self destructive habits to lead a happier life.  

Anyway, its a work in progress.  I feel like the real me shows up most, but everyone once in a while the dark me rears her ugly head and tries to tell me a bunch of crap.  I know, this sounds a little schizo, and really maybe it is.  I do think the dark me is just an illusion that I keep putting stock in.  Like a bad imaginary friend.  Who here has seen Drop Dead Fred?  

The point is that I am beautiful, I am smart, I am kind, compassionate, capable, and irreplaceable!  And so are you!  

  Is this something you struggle with too?  How do you see it?  Good vs evil?  The Force vs The Dark Side? I am curious to know your different perspectives.

Friday, October 5, 2012

The Pursuit of Passion, or Unjobbing

My husband works a low stress job that pays decent, and we are really content with where we are at in life. You'd think we would just sit and enjoy, but....its just not enough!  Aaron wants nothing more than to be able to be with the kids and watch them grow up.  He misses so much of their lives!  He came home from work one day and told me that he figured he was missing 54% of their lives.  This is pretty typical, and even good for some fathers.  I am sure there are fathers out there that work even more hours and miss even more of their kids' lives.  We just don't want typical anymore!  Not only that, but Aaron doesn't really enjoy what he does.  He doesn't hate it, but because he is there all day he doesn't have time to do anything he wants.  When he gets home he just wants to spend time with us since he hasn't seen us all day.  Our kids are pretty cute too, so I don't blame him. ;)  

This doesn't mean in any way, shape, or form that Aaron is lazy.  He not only goes to work 8 hours a day, but he takes care of the yard (if you have a house, you know this can be a lot of work), takes care of all the mechanical problems with the cars, and a whole host of other fix it kind of things.  He is my handy man.  We like to call him a jack of all trades.  So, unjobbing isn't about sitting at home doing nothing all day.  It is about finding what you love and making a career out of it.  I even used to hear this in school.  A job is an in between before you find your career.  And, there are probably people out there that would love to make a career out of things that other people see as just jobs.  Unjobbing will look different for each individual because each individual has different interests and passions.

I am sure you have heard about pursuing your passion before, especially if you read my blog.  So, we have been trying to figure out what that is for us.  We have plenty of things that interest us.  Peaceful Parenting, Unschooling, woodworking, Aaron's new one is programming, etc.  So the question we were asking ourselves was how are we going to make money with said passions? I actually called a friend up because Aaron is wanting to learn more about the stock market, and I thought he might have some useful contacts for us.  Instead he gave me better advice.   He told me to really try to figure out our passions and don't worry about the money.  ???  Right?  At least, that's what Aaron thought.  I can see how this would be a major issue with someone who takes care of the family. You can't just quit your job to do what you want when you have people who depend on you!  This friend told me a passion is something that the more you do it the more you love it, and...this is key people, that you would still do it even if no one was paying you to.
   YES!!!  YES, YES, YES!
   I totally got it!  Here I was trying to help Aaron figure out what his passion was and not thinking at all about mine, because I couldn't separate making money from what I love to do.  My passion is, and has always been to sing.  
Ever since I can remember I have wanted to be a singer.  Then, somewhere along the line, I learned that this just isn't a practical pursuit.  So I chased it as a hobby, but then, once I left high school I realized I would have to get a real job.  So I went to school and tried to figure out what I wanted to major in.  I think, to date, I have changed it about 7 times.  Nothing seemed to hold my interest for long, and in the mean time I missed singing.  It wasn't until I had this conversation with my friend that I realized I wanted to sing again.  If you want something to happen, you first have to see it as an option!  If you write off the idea, you will never know if it would have worked out or not.  You miss 100% of the shots you don't take!

So here I am, looking up talent agencies in Utah, trying to find a good vocal coach, and teaching myself how to play the guitar.  In high school I was somewhat shy and wasn't really sure if I was a good singer, and now, I don't hold back!  Even I am surprised at what comes out my mouth when I sing these days.  I don't mean to toot my own horn, but I am pretty good. (toot, toot)

  I can't tell you how excited I am about all this!!  I don't know what is going to happen, and I have no idea if I will make any money doing this, but it feels so good to be singing again and thinking of the possibilities of my future.  

My hope now is that we can figure the same thing out for Aaron as well!

What about you?  What are your passions?  Did you ever want to do something that you wrote off because you didn't think it was practical?  I'd love to hear your stories!

Have a happy weekend, and good luck with your unjobbing pursuits!! ;)