A reflection of sorts...

For those of you who know, I have a recurring back problem, triggered mostly by bending over, done mostly in picking up the children I work with. Well, it flared up on Saturday after vacuuming one of our entire couches and again yesterday at work... This is all just to explain why I was lying on the backseat of the car on the drive home from work last night. Seeing everything from a different angle and perspective made a normally mundane drive actually fun and interesting for me. The sun was just setting while we were leaving; the whole sky changing from blue to pink to purple to grey; and soon I was watching the stars come out, one by one. The whole sky was quickly fiilled with layer upon layer of stars, bright and dim, large and small. I picked out a few contellations and had a perfect view of the Milky Way, and was overall amazed by the vastness of our universe. We had the radio on, and it was so fun to sing out new and old songs, both of us being silly and not caring what we sounded like. Then this song came on, "Stay" by Lisa Loeb, and a whole flood of memories from high school and surrounding years came upon me, wave after wave. A couple of you, you know who you are, are laughing at this point, remembering me and my "Lisa Loeb, Lisa Loeb!" phase, and you know what I realized last night? I still really like her! We also sang "Open Arms" with Journey, and some silly newer song with Avril...Michael started flipping the stations, and then found the best stuff yet. I actually don't even know what it was, but it was on the classical station and it sounded like the old cartoon music, like we were expecting to see pink elephants dancing along the side of the road, or covered wagons busting along the trail. It was so wonderful, such creativity-inducing music. We shared back and forth the images that the music was bringing to our minds...Mickey Mouse and Pluto, Peter and the Wolf, my old music classes... Is was a thoroughly enjoyable ride home, and one I hadn't yet experienced. Yeah to newness and change!!!

Hair...

Thanks for all your positive comments about my bangs! In case you don't know, it is a big decision. :) Speaking of hair, I gave Michael a haircut a few weeks ago...it hadn't been done since before we left Colorado when my sister did it! He's still growing it out, but now it's much less like straw, and more like nice soft hair. Here are some pics...

Sort of a before...a couple weeks before when Michael's family was visiting and he made dinner for us all!

Half-way there; his left side is done...on to the rest!

Whew! That was nerve-wracking...but turned out pretty good! Now where did all that wave come from?!

Nice little morning-after fro! haha ;)

Daniel Thiebaut's

We had a great dinner last night! Good drinks, yummy food, and great atmosphere...

Here we are lookin' good!

Being sassy in some of my new clothes!

Aaahh...

Just some stuff...

• I celebrated my 29th birthday this past Wednesday. It felt pretty weird to not be around family and friends...kinda felt like just another day. We're going out to dinner tonight, though, to celebrate a little more properly. Here's to my last year in my 20's! Huzzah!
• We had a great time with Michael's family here in August. We tried to show them the stuff of Hawaii, and they seemed to all enjoy themselves as well! Although, Michael was a very sick boy the last few days of their stay...bad timing.
• I got to go to a conference/training for a program called Music Together in Oahu last weekend. It was totally awesome. We stayed at the same hotel the conference was in, and we had very looong days, but we were able to get out Saturday night and go to the mall...yeah for Old Navy and birthday money! I've come to appreciate the small things living on an island without every store at my immediate disposal. We went to dinner at a local place that night as well, and I got a piece of birthday mud pie...yumm! The actual training was really great, and I'm still processing a lot of it. I think I've come away with more personal things, than ideas to implement in my job, because I've realized how much I miss singing! And I mean really sing, not just in the car singing. We'll see where it all leads. If you're interested in learning more about Music Together, they have a great website.
  
• Speaking of work, I love my job! I'm getting to know my babies more and more each day, and I can see that they recognize me and are happy to see me and are trusting me more as well. The other teachers I work with are great too. On my birthday, instead of buying a cake for everyone to eat, they went to the healthfood store and bought me a huge yummy muffin, because they know me! It felt great being appreciated like that.
• Michael's job is going pretty good too. He is almost entirely working morning/day shifts which is awesome for us, so we can be together at nights now! There is a Kimo Bean in Kona, and his friend Jay just became the manager there. Michael is going to be working down there quite a bit from now on, which is also great for us to carpool together! He likes working down there as well.
• I'll post some pictures soon...we're pretty backed up! I don't even know which ones to put on first!
• "Yesterday is history, tomorrow's a mytery, today is a GIFT!" Enjoy your day...
  

"If you want to make God laugh, make plans..."

This was the key line from a great movie we watched the other night, "Bella." I can't really explain what the movie was about, except how it made me feel...no matter how messed up our world or our lives may seem at times, there is still hope and love and the possibility of life and redemption. I would recommend it to any movie-goer, but keep in mind that it is not a smash, bang, action-packed type of movie, and be ready for a bit of introspection. And bring some tissues...

This morning after arriving to work and discovering we only had three children today, two of which left early (!) I picked up a book on our shelf of child-related books I'd been wanting to read, and within the first couple of pages read some things that reverberated so well with what I'd already been thinking about, I just had to write it down and share...

(From: "I Love You Rituals" by Becky A. Bailey)

"I have noticed a growing undercurrent of change. Viewed from a small perspective, this change could appear disruptive or negative; yet from a bigger picture, its beauty is unfolding. From a microscopic view we see increases in juvenile delinquency, suicide, rebellion, depression, apathy, and drug addictions. In young children, we see enormous increases in hyperactivity, impulsiveness, power struggles, demanding behavior, and willful fits of displeasure when they do not get what they want. In young adults, brilliance and genius are budding, yet a moral compass is missing. Busy, frantic parents chase dreams and miss moments with each other and with their children. Others work to make ends meet and spend little time with each other: Material goods seduce us more than kindness. News headlines offer tragedy after tragedy, so that denial becomes a defense against hopelessness. But under all these struggles, all these cries for help, is a rumble, a wave building in the ocean of life, ready to crest and carry us all forward. This rumble is our intense, true desire for connection with each other: We long to belong. We strive to offer and receive unconditional love. This desire to be loved and loveable unites us all. "

Isn't that awesome?! And so true! There was a lot more I could have shared, but I didn't want to lose you too quickly, so I'll save it for another time :) It's so easy to look at circumstances, from being stuck in traffic, to a life-claiming accident, and try to blame someone else, saying that they caused this thing to happen, burrowing ourselves deeper and deeper into a negative way of being; when in reality people don't have the authority to determine what happens in our lives unless we give them that authority. We need to live for a greater positive purpose, heading closer and closer to true Love.