These guys are from Spokane. Their videos have gone viral the last few years. This one make me laugh every Mother’s Day. Enjoy.

My sweet friend, CaSandra, likes to send Naomi presents in the mail. It helps that she has a little blonde daughter that’s a few months older than Naomi. She sent a little package of bead looking things today. Naomi immediately wanted to know what they were and how we should play with them. I flipped the small pouch over and read the following (I kid you not, this is what it said word-for-word on the package for the “Seven Color Crystal Boll“…with punctuation and capitals included).

1. add water 400G on the product. about 4 hours it will grow up.
2. one clear beauty satiety face will grow up.
3. when the flower want to oxygen and nutrition, I will help you too much.

Made in China

Designed by Korea

I think this wins for the weirdest present ever. They were tiny purple balls that you put in water for a few hours. They plumped up like marble-sized gelatin balls that you get in “Boba Tea”. I wasn’t sure what to do with them when they were done “growing”. Naomi LOVED THEM!!! It just goes to show you that I have no clue what is fun these days. I think I’m officially old now. Because I’m still sitting here waiting for the “seven” colors they promised me. Maybe they will grow legs and walk across my table!!!

Naomi: “I can’t sleep. Can you bring me some sleeping potion?”

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We have Naomi’s lamp on a timer. It will come on in the morning when she is suppose to be awake and then turns off when she is suppose to be asleep. Every morning, she will yell over and over, “The lights are on…ding dong ding dong.” It’s the cutest alarm clock money can buy.

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(Singing the song “No More Monkeys Jumping on the Bed”)
Dana: “Did you know there is a song and a book about those silly monkies?”
Naomi: “I bet there’s a movie, too!!!”

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Naomi: “I can run faster than a rolling meatball.”

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Naomi: “Mom, would you like to drink some sleeping potion that I made just for you?”

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Naomi: “Can you be a dear and hang up my jacket?”

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Naomi: “Hey…Dad…your beard looks like you have pumpkin muffin all over your face.”

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Naomi: “Popeye can pick-up your house. He can pick-up Jesus and the whole world, too.”

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Naomi: (After spilling a tiny dot of water on the table) “Goodness!!! We almost made a river in our house.”

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Naomi: “I speak to the trees.”
Aaron: “What do you say to them?”
Naomi: “Hhhheeeeeyyyyy.”

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Naomi’s favorite way to measure how strong people are is to say how many cats they can pick up. Apparently, she can carry one cat. I can carry two cats. Aaron is strong enough to carry three cats. And Uncle Matt can pick-up four cats. We decided that is a great way to measure how strong someone is.

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Naomi: “If you ever have another baby, and it’s a boy, you should name him “Milo” or “Whaleskin”.

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Aaron has the “Operation” game on a shirt. Naomi likes to call it his “naked man shirt”. Especially in public.

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Naomi: “Silly underwear!!! You forgot to go with your pals in the laundry hamper.”

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Naomi: “Cowgirl boots are good for stomping and Crocs are good for jumping.”

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Aaron: “Naomi has no idea how many times we’ve saved her life. Parents are the real super heros.”

Recently, I had to order my SAT scores for a scholarship that I was applying for. I just got the results in the mail. I’m smarter than I thought. I guess Aaron had a combined score of 1300 and my score was a 1200 (way back in 1999 when they only had the Verbal and the Math sections for a max score of 1600). For some reason, I had it in my mind that I received a 950. I need to give myself more credit. I suppose I should start calling myself a smarty pants. I’m not a super genius or anything. That way, I can still have friends.

“One of the arguments we often use for not writing is this: “I have nothing original to say. Whatever I might say, someone else has already said it, and better than I will ever be able to.” This, however, is not a good argument for not writing. Each human person is unique and original, and nobody has lived what we have lived. Furthermore, what we have lived, we have lived not just for ourselves but for others as well. Writing can be a very creative and invigorating way to make our lives available to ourselves and to others. We have to trust that our stories deserve to be told. We may discover that the better we tell our stories the better we will want to live them.”

By its very nature, robbery involves some kind of deception. Few of us have any respect for a thief. Embezzlement is a form of robbery; however, it has an ugly twist. It is stealing something entrusted to someone’s care. The embezzler commits two crimes: robbery and fraud. The act is somehow more despicable than a common robber. The embezzler takes advantage of a trusted position, and because of this, the crime is usually detected only after it’s too late to recover the stolen property (the money has been spent, the securities have been cashed, the damage has been done, lives have been changed, and trust is difficult to rebuild).

Over a decade ago I had my first experience with an embezzler. I was working long hours in a marketing firm as their sole Graphic Designer. After two years of faithfully serving the company, we were all called into the conference room for an unexpected meeting. While we were patiently waiting in the conference room the Bookkeeper was being arrested in the front office for embezzling $10,000 during her short six months of employment. That experience dramatically effected me! Since that moment in the conference room, I’ve had this a deep sense that there is a greater need for honest Bookkeepers in this world.

Ten years later, that longing is still ever present in my heart. I’ve been waiting patiently to make this career change (from Graphic Design to Accounting), and I feel like my moment has arrived! I don’t know how wide my influence will extend in this world. However, I do hope it will at extend further than the effects of embezzlement in my community. The time has come to rebuild long-lasting trust in the hearts of small business owners, churches, non-profits and individuals. I hope to become a CPA who can build that kind of trust.

“When we are spiritually free, we do not have to worry about what to say or do in unexpected, difficult circumstances. When we are not concerned about what others think of us or what we will get for what we do, the right words and actions will emerge from the center of our beings because the Spirit of God, who makes us children of God and sets us free, will speak and act through us.

Jesus says: “When you are handed over, do not worry about how to speak or what to say; what you are to say will be given to you when the time comes, because it is not you who will be speaking; the Spirit of your Father will be speaking in you” (Matthew 10:19-20).

Let’s keep trusting the Spirit of God living within us, so that we can live freely in a world that keeps handing us over to judges and evaluators.”

Meditation. It’s my word for the year. I tried to approach this word with awe and wonder; taking it into my hands and looking at every angle like it was a new discovery in a foreign land. Within the first month, I quickly found there wasn’t a lot of information on the topic of meditation (or rather I should say I found that it’s just the same thing repeated over and over again). Unfortunately, I discovered that one has to actually meditate to receive it’s benefits.

In previous years, my word was a very active word. I read books. I talked to people about the word and what it meant to them. I wrote numerous entries in my journal and blog. I polled people through email and Facebook. This year has been drastically different. Little did I know at the beginning of the year that meditation is really best when explored alone. It’s a time of going inward. And sometimes that can be a lonely process.

In January, I went on my first trip alone. I hopped on a plane and headed toward sunny San Diego to kick off my year of meditation. After three days I was ready to come home. I was sure God had already handed me everything I needed to learn from my time away. Then, I woke-up on the fourth day. I believe that’s when the real transformation in my soul started to take place.

I learned that I eagerly enter into community before deep seeded heart change has occurred. Within the first three days in San Diego I experience some superficial healing. Don’t get me wrong…it was necessary and good to receive that kind of transformation (even if it was skin deep). However, the real change arrived after I spent four days meditating on the beach. I would have missed out on a deeper message if I would have just stopped at day three! There really is something to meditating a little bit over the long haul. This new perspective changed the way I viewed meditation.

In years past, I would pray and meditate out of guilt or obligation, and I would often do a weeks worth (or an entire months worth) in one big chunk of time. It would go something like this:

• Monday – forget entirely about prayer and meditation
• Tuesday – remember to meditate but feel too busy that day to actually settle down
• Wednesday – forget again
• Thursday – sit down and get distracted by my grocery list and then get up to write something and never go back to meditating
• Friday – feel guilty about the behavior the day before
• Saturday – cram in a weeks worth of meditation
• Sunday – sleep in

I knew this perspective had to change if I was going to have any real “success” with my meditation this year (hence the trip to San Diego). The one thing I love (which might be obvious to everyone) about San Diego is the sun. It’s not really the warm weather or the beautiful beaches (which are amazing). It’s more the predictably of the sunrise and the sunset that I have come to appreciate. It happens every 12 hours. Year round.

I found myself following this rhythm during the day. Every morning I would wake-up at 6:30am and meditate while I watched the sunrise and then gently go on with my day. And every night I would stop what I was doing to pause for a while just to watch the sunset. Because this happens around the same time everyday, I found that it was WAY easier to enter into meditation with my new found visual cues. It was easier to show up. Without guilt. Without an agenda. Just me with my heart open to God. Ready to receive. With every sunrise and sunset.

I would like to say I brought this idea back with me when I arrived in the dead of winter here in the Northwest. I did not. However, now that we are entering into Spring, I have found that my body yearns to get back into that natural rhythm of life; the getting up with the sunrise and the slowing down with the sunset. I’m still really hit and miss during the week, but my heart has changed from guilt to freedom…from dread to yearning.

I will end this post with an “ah-ha” moment that I had on my last day in San Diego. I don’t want to lose it in the recesses of my mind, so I will take a moment to capture it here. I kept the rhythm of getting up with the sunrise and slowing down with the sunset everyday while I was in San Diego. However, every evening, I felt like I was chasing the light of the sun all day just to see it leave again. There were many nights that I felt anxious and sad when the sun was being swallowed up by the waves on the horizon. And then it hit me while I watched my last sunset: the quickest way to reach the sun and the light of day is not to run west, chasing after the setting sun…but to head east, plunging into the darkness until I arrive at the sunrise. I discovered, at that moment, that I had the power to choose the direction my life would head, even if the only choice open to me was either to run from the darkness or face it as best I could.

Since I knew darkness and grief was inevitable and unavoidable, I decided from that point on to walk into it rather than trying to outrun it (and to allow myself to be transformed by my suffering rather than to think I could somehow avoid it). Now, I am choosing…everyday…to turn toward the pain and to yield to the darkness in my life. The last few months, I have tried to reserve time and space for solitude, so I can descend into the darkness alone…knowing full well that the light of day will come.

I think it is my real first steps toward growth, and it is also my first real steps toward entering into pain. I had no idea how tumultuous my grief was at this point in my life. I was also not aware of the depths of suffering to which I would descend. In the first few months, I quickly learned that I do not have the luxury or convenience of mourning loss and processing traumas as a collective whole. Instead, I have to mourn them as separate individual experiences. As my grief over one loss or trauma would subside, grief over another would emerge. But that is only a part of the story.

The decision to face the darkness through meditation (and counseling), even if it led to overwhelming pain, showed me that the experience of loss does not have to be the defining moment of my life. Instead, the defining moment can be my response to the loss. It’s not what happened to me that matters as much as what happened in me. Darkness has invaded my soul. But then again, so did light. Both contribute to my personal transformation. Therefore, choice is the key. I can run from the darkness, or I can enter into the darkness and face the pain, trauma and loss. And by doing that, I have been able to see the light return much faster than if I ran away.

Unfortunately, the choice to enter the darkness has not lead me along an easy course. The darkness is not dispelled as quickly as I would have hoped. But I keep showing up. I’m learning to live and mourn simultaneously. There are days when this gets a little messy (like when the mourning outweighs the actual living). After four months, I continue to live in that tension.

In San Diego, I learned that running from darkness only leads to greater darkness later on. God showed me that I have the capacity to grow…to absorb evil and good…to die and live again…to suffer and find Him. In choosing to face the night after the sun sets, I took my first steps toward turning around and walking toward the sunrise.

Thank you, Mandy, for your initial invitation into the light. Words cannot express how thankful I am for this experience. You could say it was life changing.

San Diego Sunrise

San Diego Sunset

I’m going back to school, and I’m pretty sure I will start this summer quarter. In an effort to get back to living “the college life”, my husband and I decided to do something wild and crazy. We went on a date night that included the following:

1. Find a babysitter for a few days (because college people don’t have kids).

2. Go on an impromptu road trip…like to Kettle Falls, Wa (because college people are wild, crazy and live on their impulses).

3. Treat yourselves to dinner at the local grocery store (because you can’t afford anything else as a college student).

4. Decide that the purpose of your road trip is to find used furniture and beer (because that is what college is all about).

5. Show-up late to everything…and yet find that you have arrived at your location just when you need to be there  (because college students have special skills that defy the laws of time).

6. Pick-up your furniture and drink your beer (because college students are finishers).

7. Stop at a small ice cream shop and watch the sunset on your way home (because college students don’t have enough money to actually pay for a hotel and stay somewhere nice…we should have slept in our car half way to Kettle Falls).

8. Watch a movie in the comforts of your own bed (because college students know how to have fun).

I’m not entirely sure I remember how to be a college student. I do know that it was totally appropriate to stay up late and drink beer the night before a very important test. That’s at least what I remember other people doing when I was in college. So, it must be true.

Naomi: “Mom, Figaro’s wife is outside. You need to let her in.” (Figaro’s wife = Pumpkin…our other cat.)

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Naomi: “Hey guys…look over here…I can make pretend stuff disappear!!!”

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Naomi: “This umbrella use to be a cane for really old children.”

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Naomi: “When I’m freaking out I can say, “hot raisin”.”

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Dana: “Don’t drink the soapy bath water. It could give you diarrhea.”
Naomi: “But I like diarrhea!!!”

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Naomi: “Mom, you’re kind of a cranky pants right now…I’m telling you for real.”

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Naomi: “There are lots of tiny poops…some look like shrimp, some look like worms, and some look like people.”

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Every time Naomi leaves the room really fast she will say, “Whoosh”. And when she runs really fast toward someone she says, “I bet you didn’t see that coming.”

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Naomi: “You know I love you…even when you’re cranky for no reason and I didn’t do anything wrong.”

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Naomi: “Do you know something? Daddy just came upstairs to love on me and then he went back to work. Isn’t that just so precious?”

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Naomi: “Can I bring my umbrella in the shower?”
Dana (whispering to Aaron): “That is like a condom object lesson for later.”

Naomi: “Can you move your mirror so I can see my beautiful face?”

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Naomi: “You know what?”
Aaron: “What?”
Naomi: “I’m up to something!!!”
Aaron: “Is it good?”
Naomi: “It’s a little good and a little bad.”

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Naomi: “Can I stop taking naps when I’m 16?”

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Naomi: “Four year olds are just so wonderful.”

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Naomi: “How long are you going to sit there and be a cannibal?”
Dana: “I can stop right now if you think that’s a good idea.”
Naomi: “Yes. I think that would be best.”

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Naomi: “Figaro is the king and Pumpkin is the queen of all the kitties in the whole world.”

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Dana: “What are you doing to Pumpkin?”
Naomi: “Looking for meat under her long fur.”
Dana: “You know we don’t eat cats, right?”
Naomi: “What!? Yes we do!!!”

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Aaron and I were sitting on the couch in the living room when Naomi causally walked over to us and said, “The gopher speaks Chinese.” She stared at us for a few seconds and then left the room.

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Naomi: “You have brown hair…so…that means you get to be the pretend bad guy, Mom. All the bad guys have brown hair in the movies.”

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Naomi: “Can we just stop for a minute and sing a song about eczema?”

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Dana: “Naomi, what is wrong now?”
Naomi: (crying loudly) “I don’t want everyone to have thumbs anymore.”

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Naomi: “I need help wiping my butt this time. There’s a lot going on in here.” (Pointing to the toilet.)

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Dana: “Do you know your last name?”
Naomi: “Is it genius?”
Aaron: “…close enough.”

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Naomi: “I’m going to give you a nickname, Mom. How about ‘Silver Beast’?”

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Naomi: “Look!!! I have light pink on my shirt. I think I will call it ‘Vagina Pink’.”

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Naomi: “Uncle Matt is so strong. I bet he can carry two cats at the same time!!!”

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Dana: “Naomi, can you sing like that?”
Naomi: “No…he has a bumpy voice.” (vibrato)

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Naomi: “It smells like surprises down here.” (basement)

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Naomi: “I love my beautiful hair. The more hair I have the more I can love.”

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Dana: “Naomi, you’ve had the same poop face your whole life.”
Aaron: “I guess God only gives us one poop face.”

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Dana: “What should we have for dinner? We have rice and beans…”
Naomi: “Do we have unicorn meat?”

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Naomi: “I love these pants. They are soft, cozy and solid.”

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Naomi: “Daddy will see what I made and he will blur his eyes out!!!”

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Naomi: “Everything tastes better when you’re camping, Dad.” (We were at home.)

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Naomi: “Everything tastes better when you’re in the house, Mom.” (We were outside.)

There’s a story of the Buddha that I read in an article this morning. It goes a little something like this…

A woman came to Buddha. Her baby died who was 3 months old. She wouldn’t put it down. She carried it for weeks, even though it was putting everyone off. She said, “Make my baby live.” He said, “I can’t do that. I can give you the seed to finding peace in the midst of this difficulty. Go get a teaspoon of coriander from every family that’s not had a death in the family. Bring back three teaspoons of coriander and we’ll make the elixir. She goes to family after family, and every family she meets, there’s been death in the family and tragedy. She comes back and says, “I am not alone after all.” She can bury the baby. If we think we are the only ones suffering, that makes us suffer the most. One definition of suffering is “pain without a sense of connection.”

There’s a sense that everyone shares difficulty. We’re not alone in this, after all.

Dana: “Why didn’t you go potty this morning?”
Naomi: “It’s because I’m a spy.”

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Naomi: “I am going to use this stick to hunt for food.”
Dana: “What kind of animal are you going to hunt?”
Naomi: “Hotdogs…and maybe marshmallows for dessert…and dinosaurs.”

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Naomi: “This is so cool…”
Dana: “What is cool, kiddo?”
Naomi: “You guys are loving me. I love you. And I love myself, too.”

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I wish I could catch this on video, but every time Naomi hears “spy” or “techno” music she will bust out a hilarious spy dance.

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Naomi: “Hey, daddy!!! Will you brush my back? It feels so wild…and like exercise.”

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Naomi: “I’m a fast poke today.”

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Aaron: (knocking on a closed bathroom door) “What are you doing in there?”
Naomi: “Ummm…I love you.”

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Looking at her pancake and sausage on her plate, Naomi exclaimed, “Ahhh…it’s my best friend.”

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Naomi: “Don’t come in my room. I’m doctoring Pumpkin’ up.”

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Naomi: “It tastes like hair and wood.”  (What she said this month when we had her taste a new food item.)

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Naomi: “Daddy, will you play with me? Mom is cranky, so she needs to go take a nap.”

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Naomi: “It’s easier for me if someone else does it.”

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Naomi: “Are there places with real princesses?”
Aaron: “England has a queen, prince and a princess.”
Naomi: “Are they mean? Are they ninjas?”

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Naomi: “Easter bunnies poop jelly beans and they potty orange juice.”

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Naomi: “It’s a pretend birthday party. Aren’t you proud of me?”

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Naomi: “I don’t need to go to bed right now. We just started a pretend party, so we need to stay up all night.”

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Naomi: “My pretend children made a surprise party for me. Isn’t that exciting?”

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When Naomi does something naughty and we are correcting her behavior, she always looks at us and says, “I won’t do it ever again.” She says it so often I’m beginning to think the words have lost all meaning.

Naomi – 1 Year Old

Naomi – 2 Years Old

Naomi – 3 Years Old

Naomi – 4 Years Old