Put it in a Dirt Farm

Excited, Life, New Inspiration!

2012-01-14T21:46:00.006-05:00

Today,

I want to scream with joy,

I want to cry my sorrows and wounds out,

I want to throw my anger as stones across the river,

and then lay down in the forest and rest peacefully

because I know that there is support

and others who want what I want

and know what I know.

It is something that I haven't often shared in my life,

my spiritual experience, my destiny, my heart and soul's desire to create a beautiful and balanced world.

I can remember when I was little and starting to learn that humans have been F**cking up... or rather are making choices that will create a hurtful future..

I remember telling a man in Clearwater Idaho when I was 8 years old that we don't need to be using money anymore, it is causing way too many problems, it's all people care about, but it doesn't even matter, not really..

I remember when I learned about the war in Bosnia where people were killing each-other because of religious differences,
and my knowledge of world and local problems snow balled from there...

I first dreamed of jesus when I was 8 years old as well.

I saw and heard the energy of the tree in our neighbors backyard when I was 12.

I saw and felt all kinds of energies growing up and had very other-worldly dreams.

I sought answers at the new-age store in high-school and started reading 'psychic protection'.

I read lots of inspiring and spiritual books.

My sister taught me what she had learned about auras and energy and intuition.

I started playing music, a lot.

I started spending a lot of time with friends who I could talk to about ideas.

I got a mohawk.

I started to think change could be done politically, or rebelliously or through art or through writing or through music.

I tried to follow my heart and wanted to be whole, to be better, the best I could be.

I also felt alone, weird, afraid and not good enough and sometimes crazy.

I wasn't balanced, but was growing.

I learned to meditate to try to deal with anxiety and found a huge amount of peace and a more constant experience of energy and resonance all around me.

I went to Mexico to meditate for long hours and learn more about the meditation and about enlightenment.

I found some answers and more questions and more lessons.

The organization split into two as I graduated as a teacher.

I taught two classes but felt unsupported and inexperienced and lost.

I felt very frustrated and crushed that my journey seemed to go to a dead end, was I really just crazy?

I took more classes and helped support the underdog retreat centre. I met my partner.

I was still not balanced and our relationship was born in the chaos that was the ashes of a modern attempt at creating christ-like teachers for our new earth..

We moved, stayed with friends, tried to support ourselves, lived, survived, cried, and eventually landed in London, ON.

I joined a men's group to help me to find answers to my questions about manhood and my life purpose and how to take care of a family.

Still unbalanced.

dreaming, fighting, peace, love and war and pollution are all around us and within our relationships and are within me.

This war, this pollution, these stupid hurtful choices that I hate in the world are the same ones that I hate in my life.

But I have been learning to accept them, that they were the patterns created before me and that I followed and allowed myself to live by until I decided to become aware and make a different choice.

I need to be whole and happy so that my family can be whole and happy so that my world can be whole and happy.

This means, healthy choices in food, every choice that I make is to either create the beautiful world that I know can exist or destroy it as our current culture wants to.

the change is happening

in me, and around me.

It starts with one in a trillion, then many follow suit and then it is one in a billion, then one in a million, one in a thousand, one in a hundred, and then soon we are all healthy and whole and happy

I can only be responsible for myself, I can be inspired to be better and I can inspire others to be better.

Today I went to the 'inspirational expo' put on by my friend Henk Ketalaars, and saw some other friends but was most blown away by the authenticity and perfect resonance of the owners of the Living Centre.

Where they have been living my dream, for 40 years!

and they are only half an hour from me!

they live on 50 organic acres and teach permaculture, raw food classes, forest gardening, spiritual practices etc...

I am so excited to have this support close by.

Tonight I don't feel alone, and I feel closer to my partner

I feel like I am on the same team as many people who might not be on the same page as me.

I think most human beings want to be healthy whole and happy, we just sometimes don't know exactly how to get there, or sometimes just give up and don't think it is possible, or we've gone as far as we can.

There is no limit to my potential.

I can be the healthiest, happiest, most peaceful man, the best father and husband that ever lived.

and I am just another guy.

we all have the infinite potential to be a million times better than our self defeating thoughts would like us to believe.

Lots to do,

lots to not do.

Lots to look forward to,

lots to appreciate.

and now its time to just breath in the present beauty.

:)

Why I don't want fluoride in my water

2012-01-08T22:03:00.005-05:00

We just got our first bottle of reverse-osmosis water(to get fluoride free water) that we then run through our Santevia system to remineralize and alkalize our drinking water.
Now, if only we could do this for our bathing water.
Actually, what would be awesome is if our city would just stop putting fluoride in our water!
http://www.fluoridealert.org/50-reasons.htm

Fluoride, to my understanding, doesn't really stop tooth decay.

Fluoride, is a waste chemical that 'they' have been putting into our water for decades just because it is a cheap way for them to get rid of it, and someone made up the lie that it is healthy for us.

Even if I am wrong about both of those, which I doubt I am, it is F---ed up that fluoride is in our drinking water even as an 'effective drug'. They don't put anti-depressants in there for cities that are unhappy do they? so why is it ok to put fluoride in there?

Anyways, it is very harmful and I'm glad to have the clean drinking water, but it is a pain in the ass for us to get fluoride free water. I have to go all the way to Wellington and Base Line, about 3 or 4 km with no car to get my bottle refilled, that is a big ordeal for a busy family man like me, but I will do it as often as I can because my family's health is worth it.

There will be a meeting here on Jan 25 to talk about the fluoride issue. According to a letter in the London Free Press, the health officials will give us their reassuring B.S.:

Flouride talk translated

Regarding Fluoridation meeting proposed for Jan. 15 (Dec. 19).

Get ready for health officials giving you double-talk on the fluoride issue.

You may hear sentences like, "There is no evidence that proves fluoridation is harmful at the levels we use." This does not mean fluoride is safe. It means:

* The test that proved it's harmful at four parts per million was not repeated for our own level of 0.7 ppm.

* You can ignore every piece of clinical, anecdotal and circumstantial evidence that, by itself alone, doesn't imply 100% proof of harm.

Also, some of this statement involves the health official's opinion being presented as fact. The statement also may imply:

* All negative side effects that they don't think qualify as "harm" can been ignored.

* All pieces of evidence that they don't think are valid can be ignored.

* The amount of damage that is done to our bodies at 0.7 ppm fluoride is acceptable.

And finally, their act of making this statement in support of fluoridation, means they have ignored the recently discovered fact that fluoride is not effective when ingested but only as a topical treatment like toothpaste.

Michael van Holst London

I do doubt that health officials will admit that there is a problem, lots of bad things will happen if anyone in any position of power admits that fluoride in the water is bad...

and yet it is very bad!

So what can we do?

Demand it be removed?

For now I have to walk my ass off a few times a week to get safe water.

To do

2012-01-04T12:32:00.006-05:00

So it is a new year and it is time to decide what to do to create our future. It has been a eventful year in 2011 and our family has grown closer and gone through more changes. My general feeling about things is that everything feels more stable. Looking back I think to myself I don't know how I lived like that!

Kelly is thinking of opening a raw food restaurant or a healthy convenience store. I would like to make sandwiches.

I also of course still love music, and I've been learning some carpentry and doing manual labour, I am also wanting to do some more writing, which is why I am doing some blogging.

Some stuff I want to accomplish is a more harmonious family, better leadership skills, more confidence and I want to find more positive supportive friendships and business partners.

I want to be who I am and start creating the beautiful life I want for myself, my children and ultimately help to make the world a better place.

It is a beautiful sunny day today. We haven't taken much pictures in the last year or so, our camera always seems to be missing some components...

I guess we have just needed to be under the radar.

My astrologist said that Kelly and I have been traveling through a 'tunnel of healing'.
~ whytehouse@eastlink.ca

I am right now feeling hopeful, with some fear about making the right choices to create what I want.

The yin/yang challenge I have been going through is that where I decide to do something that I think will feel good, like drink coffee, but then end up not feeling good, having a headache having dirty feeling teeth and jittery energy.. I have been having green smoothies every morning for a couple months now, but it is clear that it is not enough of a diet change to help me accomplish what I need to accomplish.

The thing is, I'm trying to be gentle with myself, but sometimes I am just compromising and then I feel like I'm not getting anywhere.

and then at the end of the day, all that matters is how I feel about myself and how my relationships with those that I love are doing.

Kelly keeps telling me to do what I want to do and to not let fear stop me.

I am afraid even to post on this blog because if Kelly has to go to court again for custody disputes or anything it could be used against me or her!

'big brother', the big brother that is in each one of us, will have access to everything I publish on here.

My intent with this blog is that everything I write will inspire, inform, and connect my readers.

I also am hoping to start getting some supplemental income from it.

The world is beautiful,
and each one of us has an infinite amount of energy, ideas, and potential for good.

Questions my readers or God or the Universe or Nature can answer:

Will I feel more balanced energetically, emotionally, psychologically and physically if I start eating 100 percent raw?

How can I earn enough money for my family to have our dream property with a house and animals and fresh garden vegetables and fruits plus our dream vehicle and lifestyle and also be sustainable healthy and whole?

What are my next steps toward my beautiful future?

How can I best honor and appreciate my wonderful present life?

What do you do to improve yourself and become more healthy?

How do you help your family to be healthy and happy?

Help Nature.

2011-06-15T20:20:00.003-04:00

I'm going to give growing things another try. I am going to get some seeds and try to grow us some food. Kelly suggested wheat grass, I am thinking cucumbers.

Kelly and I watched Food Inc again, and after her also reading Mad Cowboy and No More Bull and a few other books, we are now vegetarian again. As a family we are making more of a conscious effort to try to keep from to destroying life on our planet. My deeds so far have just been picking up trash off of the ground when I take the dog for his walk. This makes less trash for him to try to eat and possibly choke on, and also less trash for Azalea to try to pick up and stick in her mouth.

I have been spewing ideas into my notebook lately and playing some music at home.

Lily is wanting to start up her own organization to protect the environment.

Today I made a painting that says "You create the world with every decision you make".

I also wrote this in my notebook:

Nature gives to us, she gives us everything we need,
Let's help protect her.
We need to stop polluting.
Let the fish swim.
Let the birds and insects
fly and crawl.
Let the dirt rest and sustain
life at its natural pace.
Respect the animals and let them
live how Nature and God intended.
Reuse
Recycle
bicycle
persue clean and free technologies.
Every decision you make creates the world.
For you,
For me,
for all of the children,
Help Nature.

Back in London, survived the winter

2011-04-17T13:35:00.003-04:00

So we are now back in London and it feels a little like starting over, but it feels like we are headed in a good direction. We had some difficulties when we were in Seattle with two of Kellys' past spouses and are still dealing with one of them in the courts. I don't really care to talk too much about that on here, just to explain why the long gap in posts. So Things are going pretty well, I think, and getting better.
I am working on being more of the active teacher in our homeschool/unschool, not sure what it is yet. I have some dvds and a history book next to me here at the library to help give the girls more knowledge of our world. I, myself, am finding more of my identity and role in our blended family. Rose and I have become very close, she consistently calls me "daddy". Azalea is bonding with me more now that she is over one year old and is walking around, she always wants to come with me whenever I go outside to walk the dog or run an errand. Lily is pretty good with me, though we still have our power struggles as she doesn't always want to recognize me 100 percent as her parent and I sometimes hold onto her past behaviors and take them personally. I think her and I have come a long ways and are much more functional with each other. Wyatt and I have been playing the video game 'Civilization' together, which is probably a fairly educational game for us to be into. Kelly isn't always very supportive of our interest in it and wishes we would find something else to do together. We have sort-of tried playing music together, but that hasn't come together very well just yet. We don't see Zack a whole lot, but he does drop in from time to time. We had talked about him participating in a men's weekend that I am planning to be on staff for in May, but it doesn't look like he has much intention of going to that right now.
Lily is still very interested in science, her and Rose are very excited about a dinosaur shark called the megalodon,which we are trying to learn more about. I am finding myself interested in history. Rose still loves her ferocious tigers. I am intending to do more painting and am writing more music. I have given Lily one piano lesson and both of the girls are playing around on the electric piano more. I want to work towards having family music sessions, I suppose that is one of my goals in life, to have regular family music sessions.
Peace and love for a new age.

Iowa and on to Colorado?

2010-10-21T16:54:00.003-04:00

We have had a good week in Iowa visiting my family, I don't know when I'll be on next so I'll do a quick post.
My family out here is very loving, and that has been great and also challenging for us. It is a new way of living to be surrounded by so much love. My uncle Larry helped me change the water pump in Sam, he's a genius mechanic and only charged me for the parts. he also let me do some of the work! He also fixed up our generator, which was a mess and helped me figure out the RV water pump.
So we are in great shape, stronger yet as a family and Sam is in even better shape too.
We will have to either get to Arizona or Seattle soon as snow is forcasted around here on Nov 2.
I loved working on SAM, I feel more useful, see myself as a more capable man. And it was really sweet to have the girls and Wyatt running up to see me when I got back to the farm after working in the shop all day.
Anyways, it's my last day to visit with Grandma before leaving tomorrow, just wanted to share what up with whoever reads.
I'm keeping my dreams alive and living with more faith and confidence.
As my aunt Becky said, the community is inside 'in my heart'.
The present is beautiful, and the future is unknown, but I am sure it will be beautiful too.

Getting ready for the next part of the journey

2010-10-06T13:48:00.005-04:00

We are getting ready for the next part of the journey, this will be about strengthening and clearing energy with my family, perhaps with my past and also putting kinetic energy into my future and the future of my family! Our new plan is this, we are waiting for Azalea's birth certificate, when that arrives we will head into the U.S., visit my grandparents, and hopefully visit my sister, my mom and my dad. I also want to meet up with my friend shivo and play some music! Music is a part of my past present and future!
I want to go to New Mexico and learn to build an earth ship and maybe go to the Gerson Institute to do the basic workshop for the Gerson therapy.

I want to help people, I want to do it with music, and I want to live sustainably in my home, my travels, my food, in my social interactions and in my spirit.

I've been busking twice at the Masonville Cinema, the first time I made $7, the second I made $12! Though that is not my preferred path in music, it is one that gets me out being heard and making some money!

I would love to make a living for myself and my family by writing, recording, and performing music that I write.

Before we leave to head to the U.S. I have to get clear with my local men's group and my true feelings about the Mankind Project. (I haven't been to a meeting for a few months, and I am not particularly excited or drawn to stay connected to the project, but I want to go and clear the energy and give thanks and say all that needs to be said) This type of clearing may have to happen with some family members too in order to move ahead with my dreams more clearly too.

It is time to really go for it and make my dreams come true, no more F-ing around, and I hope that anyone I know and love will follow suit!

For me, I think it is time to live free, to live with love, to create a loving world by shining, by being me and sharing everything that I am.

Wahoo!

Quick Update, manatoulin Island

2010-09-30T10:45:00.004-04:00

We're on Manatoulin Island, ON, attempting to post some photos of Newfoundland and the back of the RV,
for a more detailed update see Kelly's blog
http://beautyinthedirt.blogspot.com/

Leaving Newfoundland

2010-09-14T06:40:00.002-04:00

Well we finally pulled out the stakes and left the Tera Nova area of Newfoundland. We left the national park, spent one day at the Shriners RV park in Eastport where I picked 2 cups of wild blueberries for us! We were there to decide which way to to go, because of the insane ferry prices from the St. Johns area, and also that ferry is 15 hours long, we headed back towards Port aux Basque for the cheaper shorter 5 hour ferry ride we'll catch on Wednesday. We are now in Deer Lake Newfoundland. We found our camera and took some pictures of Tera Nova before we left, however now the battery is dead and I can't find the charger! I guess we're mainly meant to keep memories of this trip and not meant to take lots of pictures for some reason..

So today we are going to the insectarium across the street from the RV park we've stayed the night in and then we'll head down to Corner Brook for an oil change and to fill up our propane and then down to an RV park near Port Aux Basque.

The drive over here yesterday was moving for me, the world came more alive and things felt more harmonious. On CBC Radio 2 the Dj was talking about how beautiful Nova Scotia is and on CBC radio 1 they were talking about some problems with St. Johns, it felt like we were in the flow and going the right way.

That's it for now,

Newfoundland is the awesomeness

2010-09-05T11:10:00.003-04:00

Lost and Found at the same time is how one tourist guide describes Newfoundland. It's pretty awesome. We've been hiking around, eating berries and enjoying Tera Nova National Park for the last 2 weeks. At the park we have eaten wild blueberries, wild raspberries, wild blackberries, crackerberries and such. Someone told us that the moose to person ratio here is 5 to 1, but we have yet to see one.
This is all the internet time I get for now.
More updates later.

PEI and on to Newfoundland?

2010-08-23T10:04:00.003-04:00

This is the first chance I've really gotten to go on the internet in the last 3 weeks. So far we have travelled from London ON up to North bay, over to Ottawa where Wyatt and I did some white water rafting and then went into Quebec up along the St. Lawrence Sea Way where we had our first lobster dinner of the vacation. We've been driving about 5-6 hours a day. I am hoping we can find a place suitable to stay for an extended time as I am getting tired of tearing down every morning and setting up every night, even though we do have a motor-home I still feel exhausted from it. I want some time to walk on the beach and explore nature some more. Most of my time has been spent driving and doing our little chores. I can't complain too much though, the scenery is beautiful. I very much enjoyed driving through Quebec, very friendly people. PEI is beautiful but I am a little turned off by the tourism and commercialism, though the camping and food are pretty reasonable, so far, it seems cheaper to live here than in Ontario.
So last night and a bit today we are trying to decide if we want to stay on PEI for the next month or head to Newfoundland. Last night I had a scary dream that made me think we should go. I felt like we had a lot of 'visitors'. I kept seeing flashing lights and all that. Also, Rose woke up almost every hour last night, she use to get a lot of visitors in London. By visitors I mean spirits or energy that is attracted to her. She seems to attract some psychic or spiritual energy to herself. On that topic, Rose said to her mom yesterday something like, 'I know in my heart that I am a yoga'. Pretty interesting.
After my scary dream last night I also had a calm soothing sort of 'instruction' on how to use energy, that made me feel like everything is okay.
The last week or so has been more rocky for me as I have grown tired of the work of our travel and haven't dealt with Lily's expression of her stress very well. Since we started our trip Lily has started new 'bad' behaviors like swearing at us calling us 'mother-fuckers'. A week or so ago I finally put soap in her mouth for using the F word and she hated it and stopped for a couple days and now she is starting to say it a little more again.
Kelly has told me that I have been more critical of Lily lately and though I have been trying to be more loving to Lily, it's true that I have also been more hard on her. Lily doesn't seem to handle the travel all that well, though it's hard to tell as sometimes it seems that she doesn't handle most things in life that well. Kelly and I are both concerned about what will happen to Lily when she grows up or what she will be like when she is a teenager.
So our strategy now is to try to be loving to each-other and to her and to set the best example possible to help guide her to a healthy and positive lifestyle.
Her behavior, it is pretty obvious to both Kelly and I is Lily's expression that she doesn't think very much of herself. So I want to help Lily to see all the awesome things about herself, and to do that I myself have to notice and put more attention on the 'good' things about Lily.
So I don't think we will stay at this campground anymore, it seems to be the general consensus that we want to go to Newfoundland, but we have some more discussing to do.
Also, we have misplaced our camera so there are no pictures from our trip to post!
anyways, I hope to do some more writing in the next week, I bought a notebook so I can write even if we don't have internet.

I'm working to be a better husband, dad and helping our family to be in more harmony by being more loving, understanding, strong and courageous.

I have also vowed to get my immigration in the mail today, it's my greatest procrastination, greater than all the procrastination I did in school.

Blessings to us on our journey and to all of us humans on our life journeys.

Getting Ready

2010-08-03T17:40:00.004-04:00

So there have been some snags getting ready, but it still feels like it is coming together to me. Yesterday was a terrible day with Wyatt and Zack's dad, he wants us to get Wyatt back to London by September 10th to go to school even though Wyatt says he won't go to school and wants to be home schooled.
Kelly has been trying to talk to him on Wyatt's behalf to get him in agreement but he wants to force Wyatt to go to school. It got to the point of John saying that he will have the police take Wyatt to school, which is totally bogus and ridiculous! and then he said he would call the police if she came to pick him up from his house!
So anyways, that situation sucks and has us all stressed out.
On the good side I got an awesome insurance quote for our RV today, $535/year! and Kelly found us a cheap place to sublet for the winter when we come back!
We just need to get the RV safetied and have the propane system inspected and it will be good to go, should be done in a couple days. We also have to take our furniture and stuff to storage while are away, and now it looks like it may be challenging to get the boys to help me move the furniture because he has told Kelly not to call his house and that she's not aloud to come near his house. (he seems to be a very chemically imbalanced individual)

My stress right now is that Kelly doesn't want to go on the RV trip without Wyatt, and it is up to Wyatt standing up for what he wants in order to come. He doesn't need his dad's permission to come with us because he is over 13, but it is up to him to tell his dad so and come. He says he will, but we are nervous about it. Zack and Wyatt are at their dad's this week.

The thought of having to stay in this town-home for any more than two more days makes me feel sick.

The parents around here are not those that we admire and the kids are those that we don't trust to be around our girls.

So it's got to come together! I want to get us out to BC away from this city and the toxic energy the boys dad has been putting out. I want to immerse us in mother nature. I want to go to the rain forest on Vancouver Island, I want to swim in Kootenay Lake and I want to stand by Elk Falls. I also want us all to feel the relaxation and contentment that being around nature offers us. and of course, hopefully meet up with friends and family on the way!

RV trip

2010-08-01T11:59:00.005-04:00

Kelly and I have decided to go for a trip out west for a couple months. I want to be outside, camping, fishing, traveling, seeing new things and seeing old friends and family. We didn't know how we would do it, but we managed to find someone willing to trade an RV that sleeps 6 for our Grand Caravan. It's a 1985 Ford E350 Motor Home. It has a generator, Air Conditioning, a furnace, hot water heater, shower, bath, kitchen sink, stove and oven, table, and three double beds. It is a carbureted engine, so that means it takes some finesse to get it started, but I'm getting the hang of it! It drives great and looks like it will work very well for us. We will be heading out in a few days to start our big trip!
On Wednesday we are going to move all of our stuff out into storage, we will have to find a new place to live when we come back, that way we don't have to pay rent for the 2 months we are gone.

All of the kids are coming, except it looks like Zack might not come. Wyatt, Rose and Lily all seem pretty excited about it. Lily is getting a bit obnoxious, she doesn't handle the stress of change very well, even if she likes the change! Wyatt also has some stress because his dad wants to send him to public school in the fall and Wyatt wants to be home-schooled and Kelly wants to home school him.

Wyatt, Lily and Zack are at John's now, hopefully all will go smoothly and be settled for our departure.

Now time to get back to organizing and packing for storage!

Does being an asshole win or fail?

2010-07-18T13:19:00.005-04:00

Why not be an asshole? Is there something good about being an asshole? Is there something bad about being nice?
People must get something out of treating each-other poorly, or they wouldn't do it.

I remember once I went on this self improvement weekend and there was someone asking me why I came. I said I wanted to be a better man, to be a better dad and to learn to just be a man. They asked me what might happen if I was a man, and I said that I might be an asshole. They asked me what might happen if I were an asshole, and I said that then people wouldn't like me. What would happen if people didn't like me, I would be alone. What would happen if I were alone, life wouldn't be worth living. What would happen if life wasn't worth living, I would die.
Then they asked me what would happen if I wasn't a man, and I said I would be nice. What would happen if I were nice, people would like me, but I would still feel angry sometimes and blow up and be an even bigger asshole all at once. Then the rest goes on to me thinking that I would die.

So, from that I learned that I think that being an asshole will cause me to die and if I'm nice I'll end up being an even bigger asshole and also die.

Now, here are a couple examples of how being an asshole is working in my life:

1. I was an asshole to harry, because I thought he was an asshole, then he showed how big of an asshole he was by calling me names and saying that he didn't like me.

2. The other night, I yelled, like an asshole at some asshole neighbors of mine that were being loud, having a party in their backyard at 11pm. I was angry and frustrated because Lily couldn't sleep. The people outside didn't hear me and I scared Kelly and the girls, I felt ashamed of acting like an asshole.

Later, I talked with Kelly about how I felt so angry at myself and at the people. I said I felt reckless and ashamed. She said there wasn't anything wrong with me yelling out the window, she was only scared because she thought I was yelling at Lily. She went on to say that she wanted me to start seeing and talking about how I can be an asshole to Lily sometimes. Often times, I will ask Lily to do something, get dressed, turn off the TV, share with her sister etc. She refuses, and I raise my voice or change my tone to an angry one to try to get her to listen. Now she just keeps not listening and yells at me or talks to me angrily, like the asshole I am often raising her to be.

The new attitude to remember:

I want to create a loving world, by shining love.

I want to be more loving toward her, but that doesn't mean no boundaries and letting her do whatever she wants. She still needs to eat healthy, she still can't watch TV all day, she still can't take things from her sister and throw them or hit her sister or call us names. I have to tell her calmly and from my heart, what I want for her, and if I do this, she often listens. I tell her I want her to play or find something else to do instead of watch TV, I want her to be nice to her sister. If she feels loved, she often listens. If we as a family show each other love more, we might listen to each other better. If we as a world talk to each other from our hearts more, we might hear each other better.

I think being an asshole is a defense mechanism that does harm. I might sometimes get what I want if I scream in someone's face, but I will also sometimes get screamed back in my face or punched in my face. If I calmly say what I want from my heart, I will feel better about myself, and maybe even create a long term positive effect. I don't know for sure yet, as I have yet to really tried it, or at least can't think of a time I tried this. I didn't go over to those neighbors and calmly ask them to keep it down or take their party inside, so I don't know what would have happened. My fear is that they would laugh at me, say mean things to me or even beat me up. But at least if I tried to talk to them calmly about it, I wouldn't be saying mean things to myself and beating myself up for yelling at them out the window. It is my intention to try the new way next time. They might actually decide to keep it down, or go inside, or apologize or be friendly.

I want to lead my family to a place where we are all of great value and find fulfillment, joy, health and love.

Maybe this will be right here in the city, or maybe out in the country. But it will be, hopefully, where we grow our own food, where we have enough, but not too much to distract us from love and the beauty of the moment. I can transform from an asshole into a loving, open and inspiring human.

I wonder if it will happen, if it will work, and if it does work, what will my life then look like?

Other current stuff:
Today's agenda, let's see how calm and loving I can be while I work on Kelly's dread locks, cut Rose's bangs, finish my immigration documents and deal with Lily screaming at everyone about nearly every occurrence in her environment. Lately, Lily is obsessed with TV, she wants to watch it nearly every moment in the waking day, and while we do allow her to watch for several hours, when we do tell her to do something else, she screams and has a fit. We have also stopped buying juice concentrate, it was 3 or 4 days ago when we ran out of juice and she had a huge screaming fit most of the day. We think she must have a huge amount of yeast in her body and is going through withdrawals. On Friday though, we got some freshly made raspberry apple juice from the masonville farmers market, each kid is aloud to have one cup of juice a day until it's gone.

I'm also off of coffee as of 5 or 6 days ago and I am still recovering.. I am drinking black tea to try to cope but still am having headaches and some lethargy.

Improving into a more compassionate man in order to create a more loving environment for myself and my family is inspiring me though, and bringing me more energy.

Today, I didn't start out exactly the best, I started out with playing video games; not the best choice of activities. My reasoning was that I can't get time to play any other time. It is just a hobby that I really should let go of, but I have trouble doing so.

I have my doubts about my new great idea of how to improve my life; but, I do feel I am taking things slower, finding more peace and being more aware of my attitudes and behaviors.

I've made a huge list of topics I could talk about on this blog and there are a few more in mind that aren't written down yet.

Let there be more joy, peace and compassion in my life.

I think it will be mostly up to me to do the 'letting'.

Peaceful Mind

2010-07-17T09:42:00.005-04:00

So it has been a while since I have posted, maybe because I lost focus on why I was writing for a while, maybe because I lost focus on why I do the things I do each day. I have been up to some good things though, the garden in the backyard is doing well, looks like we'll have cucumbers in a month or so, and we're getting some grape tomatoes, and I used some of the herbs from the garden in a chicken I baked the other day. I made some homemade laundry detergent two days ago that seems to work well and is incredibly economical. We, as a family walked all the way to the grocery store yesterday, first big walk we've been on in a while.

Kelly checked out 'No Impact Man' from the library the other day. We both watched the movie this winter and it inspired me to wash our laundry in the bath tub, go to the farmer's market pretty religiously, use less water and to continue buying used and local things as much as possible. The book is more in depth and I have read the first chapter so far... I'm generally not a very fast reader, I got things to do, ya know.. but I am sure it is going to have a big impact on me.

So on our walk yesterday, we didn't know how we would survive, or how the kids would walk all the way there, Kelly was starting to think we might have to turn back.. It was hot out and the kids were already asking how much further. Then Kelly thought we should grab a shopping cart that someone left under a tree. (a gift from god) My initial thought is that we couldn't take it because someone stole it from the grocery store and it's wrong to use it. Then I realized that it would make our trip to the grocery store much easier, so we took it and I tried to let go of my thoughts that there is something wrong with using the cart. We picked up some pop cans and plastic bottles on our walk, Kelly said 'maybe we'll keep them from ending up in the ocean'. Apparently there is a plastic island in the Pacific Ocean that is twice the size of the continental United States.

On our walk back Kelly kept saying she could feel people glaring at her thinking 'It's people like you that make our groceries cost more". Which is of course, probably not true. Groceries are expensive because most of the food there comes from far away, probably has to do to with how the food is produced, what farming methods are used, what chemicals are used... or maybe it's because they aren't aloud to hire immigrant workers anymore. But whatever the cause, it doesn't matter, we still had to struggle with our own consciences, we had both seen people taking grocery shopping carts to their home before and thought judgmental negative things at them. It was a wonderful walk thought, saw some wild flowers, lots of birds, plus a nice much slower perspective of our world. We also noticed kind of startlingly that almost all of the cars that were racing past us only had one person in them. These people could be riding bikes or the bus or a motorcycle or walking or anything that would use up less gas and make less pollution.

I was thinking about 'No Impact Man' and how he ventured into unknown territory, sort of. He didn't exactly know how he would live without making any negative environmental impact, but he learned on his way what worked and what didn't. Last winter I thought that this would be part of my project, part of my mission in life or whatever. I was thinking though, that someone should consider what effect it has on a person, and a family to do everything they can on a conscious, or spiritual level to make no negative impact. As I write this I have feelings of dread or worry and thoughts that it can't be done, I tried being a monk once and it seemed it was mostly a pretense. So, I want to really do it, no pretending to be happy and peaceful. I want to really live from my heart and have a peaceful mind, a peaceful soul and a peaceful existence on earth. I don't know exactly what this will look like. I don't want to become in-active and let atrocities happen around me in the name of peace. So if me not acting is allowing negative action by others, then I may just have to do lots and lots of positive action.

It was a quote from 'No Impact Man' that Kelly kept saying to me yesterday that led me to finally have this idea as I was laying awake for a while last night.
"A peaceful mind makes a peaceful man, a peaceful man makes a peaceful family."
So, this may mean meditating, doing yoga, whatever it takes. I want to start living peacefully within and towards myself, towards my partner and my family and also towards my community. To me, that doesn't mean to just 'do no harm'. Because I have taken that and let it mean to 'do nothing'.
So this is a new project and I am getting excited about it.
I did yoga the other day 10 times more gently than I have in the last two years. While in Mexico on a meditation retreat, I did yoga every day and gained flexibility, over the last two years I have lost a lot of flexibility, my body is much more stiff, but whenever I would go to do yoga I would try to make my body stretch to where it could when I was in Mexico. I could never get a regular yoga practice going because I would always have an achy back for a few days afterwards.
I have a tiny bit of scoliosis in my spine, it is twisted ever so slightly. I can easily hurt my back by trying to stretch to touch my toes. A yoga teacher in Mexico said that I should not do any stretches that but strain on my back, but do lots of walking and lotus poses to strengthen my back muscles. I also had a little bit of chiropractic work done in Sumas, WA a couple years ago that really helped straighten out my back.
So now I have to find whatever I can to strengthen my back, as it is linked to my will.
And maybe as I do what I wish to do more, my back will also strengthen.

So, today I will do some closed eye meditating, spend some time outside with some plants and try to act from my heart for every situation of the day. I will plan to report on what happened either tonight or tomorrow morning. I also had the thought a week or so ago that I should find a senior center or nursing home to play music at. We also had the idea yesterday that we would like to do some river clean-up. We need some boots and gloves for that first.

I want to find a balance between physically being active to make a positive difference in the world and progressing to a more peaceful mind and to be more in touch with my heart and living from it. I hear intuition well, I think, but I can probably listen to it even better. I'm excited to see what happens.

I want to better myself, who I am, and what I do. I want to act and work for the things I am passionate about. Human freedom, admiring nature.. I want to work together with people for the greater good.

JAPANESE WATER POWERED CAR!!

2010-06-26T20:31:00.000-04:00

Beauty

2010-06-26T20:27:00.002-04:00

We discovered a beautiful natural park area very close to our new house. We saw cardinals, orioles, dragon flies, wild flowers and plants of many kinds. It was a very beautiful walk.

On youtube Japan has a water powered car, I really want one.

I am feeling low energy today, like my body is cleaning out toxins.

I have been feeling bummed about the Gulf of Mexico this past week because it hasn't been looking like we will be able to go there, but now we are thinking we might be able to go at the end of July.

I am not sure what we would do there, take pictures and help in any way we can I suppose.

I want to do anything from help the people cleaning it up, not including anything to do with dispersants though, to cleaning it ourselves and taking pictures and writing about it.

I recognize that by using oil products I have not done anything to stop this catastrophe from happening and I intend to start working to remedy that. I have long wanted to have a water car, and I still don't know how to get, build or create one, but I have to keep trying.

I don't want to drive at all, but in our lifestyle, with kids, no bicycles and no grocery stores very close by, it is hard not to.
Plus, we may need the van if we want to go to the Gulf to help.

Positive action, water car or other sustainable energy.

2010-06-23T12:06:00.003-04:00

Okay, so I am putting more energy back into finding plans to build a water car, I have one mechanic in mind that may be able to help us to create it. Lily's biological dad is a genius mechanic, so if I can find plans and diagrams that he can understand, maybe we can do it. So far I have found one man, Stan Meyer, who shared my dream of having cars, airplanes and homes run off of water. I love his inspiring statement that " energy contained in a gallon of water exceeds 2.5 million barrels of oil when equated in terms of atomic energy. Water, of course, is free, abundant, and energy recyclable."

So, given my passion inspired by the gulf of mexico oil spill, and realizing that we may not be very useful down in the gulf personally, I am now thinking that it may be just as important if not more important to find, use, and share a better, renewable energy, like water power.

Any help or suggestions of plans or designs would be helpful.

My first goal is to have our own car that runs without the use of oil or any unsustainable product, and then I want to get an airplane that does the same. Maybe we should start with a lawn mower or something small though.

and from there, I hope that I can inspire and help us all to move off of oil products.

This is for the good of humanity, the very ability for us to keep living on this earth is threatened. The dispersants being used in the gulf of Mexico, I believe, could make us unable to grow food here in north america. The oil business needs to stop now. We've had enough wars and enough spills and enough pollution.

The time is now.

Fix the Oil Spill

2010-06-17T16:45:00.003-04:00

I have felt a ton of energy today about the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico. It is incredibly apparent that BP and the U.S. Government are not capable or maybe just not willing to fix the problem and protect the wildlife that the oil is destroying. What's even more enraging is that BP is pouring dispersant chemicals into the gulf to try to hide how bad it is, and if a storm should come, it can pick up those chemicals and rain them down over much of North America. So not only are they destroying the wildlife on the coast of the Gulf of Mexico, they are endangering the plant and wildlife, (including the food we grow here), in North America.

So, I feel like it's time to do something.

I felt like this also when Hurricane Katrina hit New Orleans, I wanted to drive down there and help. On TV they said not to do that, that it would just make things worse to have a bunch of extra people to take care of, or something like that, and for some reason, I listened! I greatly regretted not going, after 3 weeks of putting money in the red cross donation jars and there were still people in New Orleans without food or water, most of the elderly and sick were left to die. What a mess up.

So, obviously, the organizations that are supposed to manage these catastrofies are all incompetant! BP says they are pledging 20 billion to a clean up fund. They're doing too much pencil pushing, Obama is doing too much praying and committee forming and observing. It's time to get in there and save the birds and find whatever means there is to clean up that oil and do it now.

I saw a youtube video about a bacteria that has been used that eats oil, for some reason there are warehouses of it sitting, not being used, and it isn't being talked about. It's time to put that stuff in the water and clean up the oil. It's time for the people to act.

It seems to me that, in general, corporations, governments and most all organizations thing the people are stupid sheep. so let's not let them be right.

So what am I going to do?

I don't trust any organization to just give a donation, I will be lucky if 50% of what I give even makes it to help clean up anything. It seems that the only thing I can do is go down there myself.

Kelly mentioned the idea that we can make a homeschool project of it. We will load the family up and make our way down to the gulf of mexico and help in any way we can.
Youtube Oil Eating Microbes Dolphins and Dispersant

Although, this guys youtube post has me thinking again about if I really want to put my family down there...
toxic rain

What is a positive step?

Anyone know how to make my car run off of water? I know it's possible, I just don't know how to do it.

THE MOST RELAXING MUSIC IMAGINABLE

2010-06-02T21:01:00.003-04:00

This music by Ryan Farish calms my 3 month old baby every time I put it on, if she is crying, she stops within seconds. Sometimes she starts crying again when it's over! It sent warm energy and chills through my body and made tears well up in my eyes, very beautiful and calming music. It is inspiring to me as well, I want to compose music that beautiful.

An interesting thing about his music is that he has written a ton of material that is played on the weather channel!! which is funny because when I used to watch it when I was little, my parents had cable and I thought the smooth jazz on there was so corny!

I love Ryan Farish's message on his website.
“Music, is a universal language. Powerful and meaningful, it can touch lives and speak through generations. With music, I hope to convey the following truth: Hope and faith exist to bring us together, and love endures forever. May this music shine light in a dark room, may it have purpose, in the service of Love.” -Ryan Farish

This guy is using music the right way, koodos to him.

My Garden, My Family and the World

2010-06-02T11:24:00.003-04:00

So, I'm still working on getting the summer vegetables planted. I planted green beans and garlic last night, and the radishes I planted a couple weeks ago are coming up well. There only 3 or 4 little things of butter-crunch lettuce coming up and some tiny leaves showing that might be carrots. Everyone else at the community garden is putting up fences to keep out the rabbits, there are also deer there that can easily jump over the fences if they want to. I will have to get myself some chicken wire from home hardware this week to put up a fence to keep the rabbits out.

We are working to get our family moved into a 4 bedroom town-home, we haven't heard yet whether we're approved or not, we are supposed to find out this morning. Lily is having anxiety, she wants to live there so bad!

Lily's homeschool is going well, though she prefers to only have her mom do everything with her, I am now only in charge of Nature Study.

Rose is doing Salt Therapy, she's in about her third week of it, she had her 7th session yesterday. I had a strong feeling that we needed to put her in the salt therapy to keep her from getting sick. So far, she had a bit a regression in the second week but is hardly having any mucus come up the last week or so and isn't having any asthma symptoms this season!

Wyatt is continuing ground school for flying, he had an eye exam yesterday where he found out that he has different depth perception in his two eyes, so he has a sight problem and likely doesn't have any learning disabilities, which schools have been saying he has since he was in second grade. So that is pretty big, a good discovery. There are some special glasses he can get that will help him see and some sight exercises he can do to help improve his depth perception.

Zack had his 18th birthday yesterday, today we are going to celebrate with him!

Hopefully we will also be moving into a new town-home today, waiting by the phone!

Kelly is doing well at keeping our home school going and keeping our family moving forward. She has a lot of challenges advocating for Wyatt and working towards homeschooling him. She is also getting into photography and it is neat to see her expressing her creativity through that hobby.

My life is an adventure and my family is awesome.

I am getting the message that we need to be giving more to the world, so I am watching for opportunities to give and trying to remember to act on them.

Spring in the Forest, Beginning the Garden, Living Books Curriculum and Azalea's getting bigger.

2010-05-18T18:24:00.006-04:00

We returned to Parkhill Conservation Area for a second visit this past Sunday, (the forest we found magically from last post) and it was much more green, very beautiful. This time we had all the kids except Rose was with her Dad rollerskating, which was kindof too bad because she would have had a lot of fun in the mud! The trail was really muddy most of the way, so Kelly had an interesting time finding her way through in flipflops. Lily loved it, she walked through the deep mud puddles the whole way. The boys, Wyatt and Zack also enjoyed it thouroughly, though they talked about video games the whole time! Zack had a little adventure walking accross a log over the river. We saw deer tracks, baby deer tracks and raccoon tracks. It was a good day of harmony for sure.

We also started our garden this past Saturday, the girls and Wyatt helped with weeding and planting our early spring seeds. Wyatt also took the girls on an adventure through the woods where they found a broken tree house and a bridge over a river.
The London Community Resource Centre still hasn't provided water barrells for the garden so I had to bring my own, but it wasn't any big deal as I am only planting a little bit at a time. That Saturday we planted radishes and buttercrunch lettuce and then on Monday we went back and I planted carrots, parsley and beets. All I have left to plant for early spring seeds is some yellow onions. I wish I could have planted these earlier, but they only roped off the different gardens a couple weeks ago.
In a couple weeks I should do my next planting of many more veggies.

We have also started a new homeschool curriculum with Lily called the 'Living Books Curriculum'. It is based off of Charlotte Mason. So far it is going well, Lily seems to be more satisfied with herself but still asks to be on the computer and video games much more than I would like. But I can't blame her for that, we set the example for her. I am excited that Nature Study is a part of the curriculum. Our first lesson was last week, where we observed the Trillium, the provincial flower of Ontario. Lily is very good at making observations. Kelly is doing all of the other classroom work with Lily, from bible study to language arts, art appreciation, music and math. I pick out the math lessons but Lily prefers to do the math with Kelly's instruction. Which is okay because it gives me lots of time in the morning to do laundry, cleaning or take Rose outside. We are doing the foundation curriculum right now, though by her age she should be in grade 1. We will start her grade 1 curriculum in the fall and play catch up, or go whatever speed works best.
She takes most things easily but doesn't enjoy writing things down.
I think we can work more on helping her develop some more inner discipline, and again, we can work on being better examples of that.

Azalea was 11 pounds or so when she was weighed a week or two ago at Kelly's final visit to the midwives. She is trying to communicate more, making lots of sounds. We have seemed to slow down a bit on her elimination training, we get her to pee on the potty at least once a day, sometimes up to 4 or 5 times. We haven't gotten her to poop on the potty for a while though.
It is good when we get her on the potty because then it is less diapers to wash! We used disposables for a week or so and were going to the laundry mat to get a break from washing clothes and diapers at home. I am now getting back into washing them at home again. I have taken Azalea for a few early morning walks whenever I can, sometimes just a round the block and a couple times at Fanshawe Lake Trail. I like getting out for an early morning walk, plus Azalea always sleeps and it gives Kelly a break from holding her in the morning.

I am still trying to find how to be with Lily, Kelly and my 6 year old girl.. she pushes my buttons every day. Sometimes I don't think she sees me as an authority figure. In our family we have developed a habit to scold each other and Lily tries to do this to me too! she bugs and bugs. That being said, I feel a lot more appreciation for her and enjoy her company more than I did a year or so ago. There used to be mornings where I would cringe when she woke up because I knew she would start screaming at me about something within a few minutes. I think we have made a lot of progress since then. Going outside is usually something that I just do with the girls and also, since last Wednesday I am now taking Lily to homeschooler baseball every Wednesday! I think these activities will help us grow more respectful to each other. We are also starting to embark on playing music with each other, which is something we used to do when I first got together with Kelly. However, then it got to be not so fun because I didn't like to share my instruments and didn't know how to deal with her dominating personality!
Now she wants to play the drum while I sing and play guitar, she wants to go to play at the market to make money.
That should be an interesting endeavor. I want to be encouraging and make sure it is fun for her. She was a way of building things up and then being disappointed, as do I.

We are still trying to figure out how to have our land where we can have chickens and a cow and live off the grid. So far we are still unable to make that happen. But I feel good about our developing healthier habits, getting outside more, the new curriculum, and the garden. We have to keep working towards our dreams in small steps every day.

The Forest, spring and milling flour

2010-04-12T10:01:00.002-04:00

Yesterday Kelly and I decided to get out of the house. It was Sunday, and all the kids were gone for the afternoon except Azalea, who sleeps a lot. So we didn't know where we were going, we just got in the van and started driving.
We both wanted to get something to drink, I really wanted a coffee. We were then questioning if we should stop some place and get a coffee as we are intending to get away from being consumer-like. My rationale is that it would be cheaper and probably better for the environment if I had my own bag of coffee beans at home to make coffee, but then it wouldn't be good for my health to have coffee every day, so I am now only occasionally getting a coffee while we are out and about. We both wanted to and we decided that it is better to not be so militant in living our ideas. I got a cherry mocha and Kelly got a cinnamon dolce late. So then we continued driving until we got to a sign that said we'd be in Sarnia in 64 km, and then I turned because I didn't want to go to Sarnia. Then as we were driving I said "I want to find a place where we can be in the woods, just go for a walk or sit in nature". Then after maybe 5 kilometers the road that we were on met a highway and Kelly thought we should cross it and keep going. The road we were on ended and there was little gravel road that led into a conservation area! We ended up having a very nice walk through the woods there where we saw the first wild flowers of the season, deer tracks, a blue heron, and we met another nice family that was at the same trail for the first time.

We came back to town and went to a Thai restaurant we noticed a week or so ago. I love Thai food. It's almost always delicious and reasonably priced. They even had the cream cheese filled wantons!

When we got home I used our new grain mill for the first time and it ground up some whole wheat flour for us beautifully! Right now the flour is soaking in yogurt, a Sally Fallon recipe for making herb bread. It will get baked tonight! This will be my first loaf of bread made without yeast! Later this week want to make some sourdough starter so that we can make our own sourdough bread.

The other day we were at costco and there was a wagon there that the girls really wanted to get, but I didn't want to get it because it is a huge hunk of plastic! So instead we are going to build our own wagon. The girls will help build it and paint it. I'm excited to do this!
The only thing I don't know how to do yet is find metal to mount the axels and the handle and stuff.
But this should be a learning experience for us all and we won't have to buy something made in china or something made of toxic synthetics.

Another thing I wanted to talk about is a video Kelly found a week or so where a woman named 'Little Grandmother' talked about how to live more enlightened, sustainable and to remember the power each individual has.

She actually offers steps that each person can take towards being a part of the solution. I like them very much and am trying to apply them more in my life every day. Making sure to get outside and to not get into a battle of the wills.

I highly recommend watching her videos, there are 10 videos about 10 minutes each on you tube where she is talking at 'Sante Fe Soul'.
I will embed the first video here.

Grandma Visits and Spring Equinox

2010-04-02T20:22:00.003-04:00

It was a busy and full week that went by too fast!
My Mom arrived to visit from Seattle on Saturday, March 27 night and left to go home this morning April 2. We all miss her a lot. I wish she lived closer! I don't know if she will ever move closer though, Seattle is pretty awesome, beautiful mountains and a neat culture.
We are finally caught up on our rent, so that feels good. We are now on our way to balancing out and finding the best way to move forward.
We really want to be able to have some chickens, so once we get our income stabilized we will see if there is any way we can afford to.

Stable Hurricane

2010-03-26T17:55:00.011-04:00

Today is Four, Storm in the Mayan Calendar.

Today, Kelly is trying to set up some boundaries between our family and how Lily connects between us and the boys dad. It has been an ongoing problem that he has seemed to give her poor care while she goes to visit him. We hear about her eating poorly, not bathing, not brushing her teeth, staying up rediculously late, watch television all day, not going outside, watching innapropriate television programs, movies or video games etc. Kelly has stated to him many times that when she goes to his house, Lily must go to be at her regular time, brush her teeth, bath, go outside, not watch too much tv etc.

Lily talks sometimes about how he makes her eat vegetables, he does bath her, but not every weekend she goes...

however, she seems to always come home rammy, disrespectful to everyone in the family and very out of harmony.

John, the boys dad, doesn't want to take any accountability for not meeting the parameters Kelly has set and wants to keep having her over without changing his behavior.

So Kelly made it clear that Lily may not go there if he will not take good care of her and he still refuses to take accountability, and so now she isn't going!

She is a bit upset, but not as much as I'd imagined, because I have imagined that this day would come.

She has had a couple bouts of yelling at her mother but really only about a 5 out of 10 of the kind of melt down I have seen of her.

This whole occurance is in a gray area for me, but only slightly. I fully support Kelly in standing up for herself and it seems that John expects to just ignore Kelly's requests and Kelly is not letting him get away with it.

I think that this is really for the greater good of everyone. John is being shown with a huge neon sign that he needs to make a change, so far he is ignoring it. Lily is being shown that a woman can stand up for herself and set boundaries. I think it is good for everyone.

My only doubt is, what if this is the old kind of justice?
That is the only thing I'm not sure of, is this really for the higher good?

My first inclination is yes, but I do have a small doubt, maybe it is an old fear of mine that bad things will happen if you stand up for yourself.

Last night, Kelly and I read some things that Peace Pilgrim wrote. She was a great sage on peace, harmony and happiness that dedicated the last few decades of her life to walking across North America trying to get more people to choose for peace. The one thing I read that I have firmly in mind mind that she said was to 'do the things that you think you should, and don't do the things that you don't think you should'.
Pretty simple!

When looking it at it like that, it is easier, because you don't have to intellectualize what the greater good is, you simply have to look to your heart to see what you really think you should do.

It was funny, this morning, because we all went to Fanshawe Conservation Area for some outside time, and the girls dressed up in full rain gear even though it is sunny out side. Kelly said 'Lily, it looks like you're dressed for a hurricane!'
an interesting foreshadowing because it feels like we are in the eye of a hurricane right now... but a stable one. the turmoil happening as a result of the long awaited setting of boundaries in this situation has been pretty manageable so far.

Each day is unique, in each moment there is a chance to choose to do good and create harmony or to self serve and be out of harmony.

But what does harmony look like?

I think it can look as many ways as there are atoms on the Earth.

Heart Math

2010-03-25T10:45:00.010-04:00

Today, I picked up a book I am reading on occasion called "The Biology of Transcendence" By Joseph Chilton Pearce.
It was fitting because shortly after I picked it up, Lily started having a meltdown about wanting to go on the computer and her Mom saying 'no'.

In the book, Pearce talks about how our brain has parts that are ancient and mammalian and reptilian. We have parts of our brain that have us go into 'fight or flight' when we are in a stressful situation. In our modern day, people are under stress a lot, and even children are! Lily is a child who has had more than her fair share of stress in her life so far. When things don't go her way she has huge meltdowns sometimes swearing, hitting, slamming doors etc. She has to share with her siblings and parents in a small apartment and is often disappointed and let down and gets broken promises from the one she calls her 'real dad', and sometimes from her brothers and regrettably, Kelly and I as well. She has lots of stress and opportunities to choose for fight or flight or for a higher choice, as do we as parents. She needs much better examples from here on out to help her find her strong morals inside herself and to act on the higher good. This tool is something we all need to use as much as possible.

So after Lily calmed down a bit from her meltdown, I told her I wanted to teach her about 'Heart Math'. A tool that people use in stressful situations to be able to think clearly and do what's best for everybody without screaming and hitting people. We talked about the ancient brain and how in a stressful situation she wants to run away or fight. At first she said she didn't understand what I was talking about but as we talked more about it, it was clear that she did. She talked about past stressful events when she was at school and a girl was saying mean things to her and she wanted to scream and hit her but she didn't. I praised her for already being able to recognize the stressful event and being able to make a better choice. I talked to her about how people are special because we have a new part of the brain, the frontal lobe, that allows us to make a new choice in stressful situations. We don't have to fight or run away, we can make a better choice than what our reptilian brain wants to do.

So we talked about how the first step is to just recognize the stressful event, to realize that you are in a stressful situation. The next step is to put attention on the heart. Think about the heart and take a deep breath thinking of the breath going down to the bottom of the heart and putting her hand over her heart.
She practiced this and we talked about how it feels silly at first, but then you realize how good it feels and how powerful the heart is.

Then we talked about thinking of a joyful event, she thought of a birthday party. We talked about letting the joyful feelings go into her body and keep thinking of her heart to fill up with positive feelings to counteract the negative feelings produced from the stressful event.

Then we talked about asking her heart what would be the best thing to do in the situation, what would do the best good.
Still thinking about the heart.

Then we talked about listening to what the heart says.

Then we talked about doing it.

She said that her heart told her to say she was sorry for how she behaved to everyone and to take three deep breaths and to try to not act like that anymore.

She had a hard time actually apologizing to her mom, she mumbled sorry from the bedroom doorway..

I thanked her for listening and practicing the heart math. I think she did very well letting it in and practicing it.

The key will be to help her to keep practicing it and for Kelly and I to practice it ourselves!

Here is Joseph Chilton Pearce's description of Heartmath's Freezeframe in his book 'The Biology of Transcendence':

"1. Recognize when a stressful event is shaping up or taking place and "freeze the frame" at the instant of recognition. Freezing the frame is like pushing the 'pause' button on your VCR-the picture's action and the sound are stopped immediately. As soon as you realize a stressful event is manifesting, freeze your state of mind, making no mental response. Any of us can suspend our thought, blank out inner chatter and ordinary reaction for a few seconds while we perform step two.

2. Shift your attention to the area of your heart. Focus and hold your attention there for the few seconds you will need for step three.

3. Recall a positive, joyful, fun-filled event in your life, or bring to mind some person whom you love fully or savour in memory. Form an image of that person or event as best you can and hold to the joyful feeling of that recollection without shifting your concentration from your heart area.

4. Keeping your focus on your heart, open to your intuition and common sense and, with utmost sincerity, ask your heart what would be the best response you could make to the situation at hand. What behavior on your part would be most effective in resolving the tensions or healing the rupture in the relationship involved in the situation taking place?

5. Listen to what you then hear or feel as your heart's response.

6. Act on the heart's response."

Pearce goes on a few pages in deeper description of the practice in that chapter of the book.

The most important thing is to practice it!

This practice is often contrary to what my initial response wants to be to negative behavior. I am stubborn and want to set up brick walls to prohibit anything but harmony at all times! Putting up walls and going to battle have not worked between Lily and I. If I put her in time out or try to punish her or tell her what she is doing is wrong, it usually makes the situation worse. What does help is reminding her of what a better action is.

As Barbara Coloroso says, the only time you have to go against your child's will and forcefully stop them from doing something or pick them up is if they are in imminent danger. If Lily were standing in the road with a car coming, I would grab her or pick her up to get her to safety! In almost all other situations though, she needs a gentle, firm, positive discipline.

I am hoping the Heart Math will help empower her to take it upon herself to choose for better behavior.

We, of course continue to set boundaries and express expectations. We then try to practice natural and logical consequences.

Discipline is something I have also been learning a lot about and will likely do more posts about.

Our Blended Family

2010-03-22T20:18:00.008-04:00

Sometimes our family feels like we are always missing someone. When we were waiting for the baby we were lucky to get Zack to stay here with us to help take care of the girls when we had the delivery, since Azalea was so late he ended up staying here for a month straight! and it was awesome. He normally stays here a week and then a week at his dads. It is always hard on everyone when he leaves. Wyatt comes here every other weekend and is in residential school during the week. However we now have a good routine going with him where he comes home to stay with us every Wednesday night, and that is very nice to have him here every time. Lily is here except random visits with the boys dad and every other weekend. She calls the boys dad, here 'real Dad', (he has been in her life since she was a baby, Kelly had left him and had Lily with another man and then went back with the boys dad for a bit before finally ending it with him). Sometimes I have the hardest time with Lily. Rose goes with her dad for a few hours on Wednesday afternoons and a few hours on Sunday afternoons.
The schedule is fairly regular, but is still stressful on our family. Every time the boys leave there is a lot of sadness in the air here. A positive about the routine is that sometimes Kelly and I have time for just each-other and there is time to catch up on cleaning and recharge.
Now we have Azalea who will always be with us! There is no 'real dad' or other dad for her to go visit with!
So Rose will always have a sister here when the boys and Lily are at Johns.

It has been a challenge for me to find my place with each of the kids. They are each at their own age and each has a different relationship with their mom and their biological and other parents to take into consideration. It seems like we are always having to restate boundaries and expectations for our household.

Zack is seventeen and is always pushing the boundaries of when he comes home from being with friends and how often he is away with his girlfriend or other friends. He is still learning how to come home when he says he will and communicating with us about where he will be and how long. I know that for him we just have to keep telling him our expectations and get him to talk to us about what he thinks is fair and what is going on with him. For the most part he is a helper and can be really great with his brother and sisters. He currently does improv acting at school and is pretty good at it. He is very smart and will be very good at whatever he chooses to do. I hope he chooses something challenging and fulfilling for him.

Wyatt, a fourteen year old, has a huge heart and is a helper at heart. He has some resistance to helping sometimes, but once he starts doing it, he usually does a good job and feels good about it. He plays with the girls a lot and usually enjoys going on outings with us. His struggle is usually that he always wants to be playing video games and he doesn't like long trips. He has a very kind heart and seems to be at his best when outdoors. I see huge potential in him that it seems school systems don't foster. His current school has no art or music or connection to nature.. The plan is to homeschool him next year and hopefully he will have lots of exposure to more things he is good at and enjoys. I want him to realize his huge worth and utilize it to live the wonderful live he is entitle to live.

Lily, our six year old. is a sweetheart and also really enjoys helping. She often helps with cooking and cleaning and likes to be outside. She often resists going outside or helping with anything though if she is in a bad mood or thinks she wants to play video games. She is always asking to play games on the computer. She sometimes has a middle child mentality and talks very loud to be heard and has a hard time waiting or sharing. She has a very strong will and when put to good use with good energy is very powerful. We have a terrible time with her if she becomes unhappy and begins with bad behaviors on us or her siblings. We are always trying to teach her to express her emotions and cope with them in a better way, but we also sometimes just have to accept her the way she is and love her no matter what. Lily has a great imagination and is a great big and little sister.

Rose, our three year old, also has a great imagination, she often plays by herself, with sticks as puppets or even her fingers or toes. Her favorite toys are small toys. She loves to be outside. She has a temper of her own but usually is easier to handle and help her recover. She is usually very good at sharing toys but sometimes refuses if she thinks she is being taken advantage of. Even then, eventually she ends up sharing in the end. She is always helping me with cleaning, laundry and cooking. She is quite a little sweetheart.

Azalea, now two weeks old, is like the perfect baby. She eats fast, she sleeps most of the night only wakes up a couple times. Doesn't cry very much and when she does it is pretty easy to help comfort her. She is gaining 2 ounces of weight a day, so she's growing fast! She can already lift her head on her own. We all love her very much and hope to be the best family in the world for her.

Kelly, the mothertree of our blended family, is a very loving Mom. Like some of her kids though, she can give up quickly. She has a very strong will though and will always end up going for what she wants. She is very intuitive and powerful. Often times in our relationship I felt like she was a bulldozer because she was determined to make me see something her way. Usually at these times, it was something I really needed to let in though, and eventually did despite my stubbornness. She has huge dreams, all of which I want for them to come true and many of them I share with her. Living sustainably, having our own animals, having a family full of harmony. She always helps me when I am in a weak state and is good about expressing and sharing her own emotions. She is an amazing woman and I am very lucky to be with her.

I have been the step dad in this family for about three years and have found purpose and fulfillment where I didn't know I would! I was eased into being a parent by only being around the girls the first six months Kelly and I were first together, some of that time Lily would leave to visit with the boys dad and Rose would regularly go visit with her dad. I have had to do a lot of maturing and personal growth to get better at being a parent. I have loved the challenge and the rewards. I have a big family that I cook for every night and I have loved learning more about food and how to offer healthy delicious meals for everyone. I have also learned to incorporate doing the things that I love and sharing them with my family. I play music almost every day, sometimes the girls dance to it or sing along. We have had a couple of family music times, I want us to have many more! There are things that I very much enjoy doing with each and every family member from going outside in nature, skateboarding, music, video games, cooking, war-hammer, star trek cards, camping, canoeing, hiking etc. I often have to find a balance between speaking my mind to my family members when I have something I need to say to them and accepting our blended family situation the way it is! There are times when it is very frustrating and harmony seems far away, but it always comes back to a new and better harmony and I think acceptance and praise and gratitude and setting a good example are the best ways to grow harmony in our family.

Elimination 'Training'

2010-03-22T14:55:00.006-04:00

I couldn't believe it the first time Azalea actually went to the bathroom in a bowl! It works! The idea is called Elimination 'Training', training is in quotes because it is not a rigid training and is actually all about listening to the baby and paying attention to when she needs to go and just providing a potty or bowl instead of leaving her to only go in the diaper. The way I have been doing it is just holding her over the bowl for a bit when I go to change her diaper, sometimes after she's already peed or pooped and then see if she needs to go more. Also, I watch her face and listen to my intuition and be aware of when she usually goes to try to get her over the bowl instead of in the diaper. This morning, after she ate, I thought she had pooped, but when I took off her diaper, she hadn't, so I held her over the bowl and then she went!

Some good reasons for doing elimination training are:
-baby is less likely to get diaper rash
-less dirty diapers to change
-Better psychological wellness for baby
-better hygiene for baby
-better for the environment
-becoming more in tune and aware of the baby's well being
-looking forward to an easier time of potty training in 2 years.. she will already be familiar with it from being held over the bucket and will be more willing to go on the potty if we don't train her to sit in her own filth!

Elimination training is done commonly in other countries like India and other places where people don't believe in or cannot afford to use disposable or even cloth diapers.

We use cloth diapers and right now a lot of the time she goes in them. It's cold this time of year so she's dressed warm and it takes a minute or two to get her ready to be held over a potty. However, from what I have read, it is good to take an easy pace and just become more aware of when baby goes and get her over it. It is a non-stressful practice and we absolutely don't force her to do anything! If she starts to cry while being held over the potty bowl, I stop and lay her down to put her diaper on.

I'm looking forward to getting more in tune with her and catching more of her poops in the bowl instead of in her diaper!

Here is a good place to find info about infant potty training aka elimination training:
http://www.timl.com/tt/

Mayan Birthday and Astrology

2010-03-13T10:46:00.010-05:00

Mayan Astrology is something that I learned about from my brother-in-law Kylan. The Mayan Calendar according the Mayan Majix and Carl Johan Calleman is something that to me explains a lot about the world and universe and how things are, why things are the way they are, where we might be going and what the best thing to do to create a better future is.
The Mayan Calendar is a very intricate calendar and has different parts to address different aspects of life. One calendar is just for farming, the 360 day calendar, I beleive. Another Mayan Calendar, the long count, is to keep track of the evolution of consciousness and ends in October 28 2011, different from most media broadcast of it ending in 2012. The third calendar is the Tzolkin and is for astrological and spiritual purposes. It works like a gear with 260 days and has a day sign and a number, or intention. there are 13 numbers or intentions and 20 day signs. When the baby was late we started wondering, she must be waiting for the right day in the Tzolkin. The day each person is born in the Tzolkin is in line with their life purpose.

My description of the calendar is very basic and probably won't explain it well for anyone who is not familiar with it, for more info please visit these two websites:
http://www.mayanmajix.com/infocenter.html
http://www.calleman.com/

So, the day that Azalea ended up being born on is 13 Wind.
I will quote from the Mayan Calendar and Conversion Codex her basic reading here:
Thirteen/Ascension
"Going from one step to the next higher step. The energy of Thirteen propels the effort to try something new or to try again. Persons with the energy of Thirteen are always going over the next mountain just to see whet is there. Thirteen carries the last success to the newest effort."

This is cool to me, because we are in a point in our lives in our family where we are all trying to get to the next step. We want out of our apartment and into a self sustaining home with a garden and animals. We want more joy and more understanding and more fun and more abundance. We are doing our best to get there but we are often impatient! The point is, Azalea bearing the number thirteen, I think is a great omen that our family is headed to new things.

Now her day sign:
Wind (iq Ix)
"Breath of spirit, breath of life. Winds embody the power of dissemination and planting of good seed or ideas. Dreamers and planners with powerful imaginations, wind persons make great orators and they spread the word of spiritual inspiration as if carried by the wind. Wind is the power behind the movement of natural cycles such as weather, erosion and cultural change. As the wind, these persons are extremely changeable and adaptable. They may appear inconsistent or fickle to others. Wind can be destructive to self and others by putting on airs. When winds strut and boast, expanding on facts and accomplishments, they are building the dark clouds of trouble that may become hurricanes."
"A good day to: Send Communications of all kinds."

This, I think goes awesomely with her life intention of 13! An ascending communicator! Very cool. Her essence is definitely very powerful. Lily is always bugging to hold her, because it feels so good! Every time I hold Azalea in my arms, my body is filled with warmth and light, much like I feel when I meditate or am touched with love. For her being alive, I feel like a king who need not rule, but watch with joy as the world around him finds harmony and realizes happiness!

In my journey of self improvement I think I need to put more attention on health and exercise and meditation and positive action.

My Mayan birthday is 3-reed.

I will share my Mayan astrology as well since I talk about myself a lot in this blog!

Three/Action
"Movement, Communication. Three energy is very eloquent in all types of self-expression. Communication is how you establish a point of agreement between any point "A" and any point "B". The basic movement being a vibration, three persons are rhythmic to the core. They are often restless, as motion is their nature. By working closely with the energy of Three, any person becomes more able to predict the motion of all kinds."

This I would say is very true of me. Some examples are: that I chose to be born into a family that moved to seven different homes by the time I was 18, I am most content in a moving car or airplane staring out the window, my favorite sports are ones with constant movement, soccer, skateboarding, biking, hiking, backpacking, climbing etc. Also, since being with Kelly, we have driven across the continent twice and flown across twice, together. Also, we love to go for drives and take vacations that are 8 hours or so up north, and once we get there we yearn to go for walks or canoe trips! The exception is when I distract myself with a video game I can fool myself in probably an unhealthy way to sit in front of a computer or TV for hours while trying to accomplish the next mission. This is something I am in and out of.. I try to keep my video game playing at a minimum as it has often distracted me from accomplishing other things in life.

My day sign is:
Reed (Aj Ben)
"Reed persons are the spiritual essence, protectors and guiding light for family and home. They are competent speakers who will take up a cause. Very tough and analytical, Reeds endeavor to bring peace, harmony and order to all of their relations. Reeds are blessed with great skill at negotiations and consoling which are very often put to the test. Although Reeds need a lot of appreciation, many have marriage or business problems because of inflexible views and high expectations, which erode affinity. The lesson for Reed is to be like a garden hose, not a steel pipe."
"A good day to: Bless or repair your house"

Having high expectations and being inflexible has definitely given me a lot of problems! Even after being aware that it is part of my nature, it still creates many challenges. I have often set too high of expectations on myself, Kelly, the kids and basically every human I have ever interacted with! I often see the great potential in a person or situation and expect for that to be lived and often end up being frustrated or disappointed when reality falls short of the expectations I set. I so dearly want a self sustaining home and am often frustrated because we live in an apartment where we are far from self sustaining and there is not an immediate clear path right now to getting our self sustaining home. However I am doing things to make our home more harmonious, alive and sustaining. We have our herb garden inside and I do our laundry in our bath-tub and I make bread from scratch. This year we will have an urban garden where we can finally have some of our own grown fruits and vegetables! As far as the speaking goes, that is something that has been reawakening and reforming in me for the last two years. I have often in life been quiet because I let fear stop me from speaking, and once I finally did it was not so smooth and consoling! However, there have also been a great many times where I believe I have been able to be consoling and negotiated peace and harmony. It is also a deep desire of mine to have harmony and peace in my family which I have put myself in a situation that puts that at a great test! Not only am I the son of divorced parents , but I am now committed to being a stepfather of 4 children of 3 different fathers, a partner who has chosen many men who have disappointed her, one six year old child who has already had more difficulty and trauma in her life than some young adults and I am young and inflexible with high expectations! I get through this with my strength of consoling and negotiating and with a deep faith that everything is and will be okay.

The Mayan Calendar is a very insightful tool for being a more conscious person, a more fulfilled person and a more in-tuned person. The recommendation is to be aware of each Tzolkin day and read it in the morning to keep in mind during events throughout the day. I am guilty of having not done this! However, I will commit to doing this from now on, because I will do whatever it takes to help my family to be more fulfilled and to find our way to an earth-ship or some kind of self sustaining home. If this helps, and I think it does, I should be utilizing it at least at the recommended amount!

View today's Mayan Tzolkin day at:
http://www.mayanmajix.com/TZOLKIN/DT/DT.html

Azalea Moon is born!

2010-03-09T12:54:00.003-05:00

My daughter Azalea Moon was born this morning at 8:33 am!! she is 7 pounds 9 ounces. Kelly's water broke yesterday morning at 10 am and didn't have any contractions until about 10:30 last night. Around 3:30 am she started having more frequent contractions and at 6:30 am they were strong and only about 5 minutes apart, so we called the midwives. We are very glad that the baby is born today, Kelly was at 42 weeks and 1 day. The hospital was wanting Kelly to start coming in every other day to do tests on her and keep asking her if she's ready to be induced. Kelly's first daughter, Lily, nearly died when doctors induced her 6 years ago and so we were not wanting Kelly to be given induction drugs again! This birth was spontaneous and beautiful. It was so awesome having midwives so that Kelly and I were informed about everything going on and able to make decisions without having medical opinions shoved down our throats! It felt very natural and intimate to have the birth at home, and the girls and Wyatt could come and meet the baby right after she was born! Lily also got to see the placenta and that was neat. We're keeping it in our freezer until we can use it in our garden.

Nothing can describe the awe of the baby actually being born.. I still can hardly comprehend it.. that baby came from us.. it blows my mind.

Kelly is doing well, she is resting in bed for the day with Azalea, I am tired but nothing I can't handle very easily.
I didn't do any work really... haha, I just counted time and watched and helped remind Kelly that she could do it!

The mess wasn't even a big deal, we had shower curtains beneath the sheets and a tarp on the floor. A couple drops of blood got on the floor, but the midwives cleaned it up. I just have a little load of laundry to do and a tarp to rinse off!

The midwives were very competent and helpful to make the delivery go smoothly, very encouraging and empowering for Kelly, I think.

Now I'm going to see if I can get the girls to the park for a bit!

And I might need another coffee

hehe,

I might be drinking coffee for the next month or so.. or I might try doing some rigorous exercise in the morning.. probably more healthy.. we'll see !

If we ever do this again.. I definitely vote for another home birth!

Clay Sculpting and thinking about adding more to homeschool

2010-03-05T19:09:00.009-05:00

Thursday's Clay sculpting was pretty fun. The girls enjoyed making things with the clay, who doesn't? Lily made a pretty detailed little girl. She was a little frustrated at first because it 'didn't look like a real girl'. She sets expectations on herself pretty high! Lily also didn't like that we weren't able to keep it and make it hard to be able to play with later. Her girl feel apart when it got dry.
I also transfered our herbs into a box together, they seem to be doing alright, though Kelly says I didn't give them enough space. I may have to move some of them to another pot or something.
Today was supposed to be science experiment day, but it hasn't happened yet. I took the girls the the Children's Museum, we were there from 10am until 2:30pm, then we had to get Wyatt and after that it was an errand and dinner time and now it is somehow 7:30pm!
The avacado isn't eaten all the way yet, and Lily doesn't seem very interested in growing an avacado plant. I think she wants us to make some kind of interesting substance or do some more exciting experiments... I'm not sure how to live up to her expectations on that.
Unschool... is it working?
Today, Kelly found a website that might help us to find more activities called http://www.lessonpathways.com
The website sets up a curriculum week by week with an activity for each subject each day. Kelly doesn't seem too interested in doing this at this point, but I am interested in it. Considering it, at least.
If we were to follow this schedule, we would have around 2 1/2 hours of activities scheduled every day for Lily plus whatever we decide to do with Rose. Looking through everything I see things that I think I would like Lily to learn, but the question is if she will want to learn it, and if not, do I still need to try to teach it to her? We have been following the principle of 'Un-schooling', where parents basically let the child lead the learning. So we live life like normal and when Lily is interested in something, we tell her more about it and if she wants can do activities about it and things. here is a website about unschooling: http://www.unschooling.com/The reason I liked unschooling in the first place is because it lines up with my passion for human freedom. I will do some more reading about unschooling, maybe I will remember it's benefits be re-inspired and not be as interested in adding structure. The baby will be here soon and I will be doing even more of the house chores, and I already do almost all of them. doing 2 1/2 hours of structured homeschool school activities every day might be a bit too ambitious for me at this time anyways. I wonder if I am interested in the structure because I am doubting my abilities and Lily's abilities to find happiness on our current path.
I do feel like I want to do more school activities with Lily. We don't plan a lot of activities or commit very much time to workbooks or 'lesson time'. She wants to be able to read, but hasn't enjoyed phonics, reading and writing practice very much so far. Kelly found some info the other day stating that the child will teach them-self how to read..
So I don't really know what to do yet, but I am always wanting to improve things, but sometimes I end up ruining things by trying to improve them! So I want to make sure to take things a step at a time with this. I might not need to change very much in our approach to education if I have a clearer intent on what it is where are doing.

Before we went to the children's museum today Lily was very grumpy and for no apparent reason, so we did a little thing where she took the negative feelings out and put them in a plastic container and put a lid on it and then I zipped her up with positive energy. It made her giggle and worked pretty well! We had an awesome time at the Children's museum. No battles over where to go or what to do and the girls listened about when it was time to go and played well with other children. Lily made a couple of friends there and got the phone number from one friend in hopes of calling her to play again sometime.

Kelly and I have been butting heads today over silly things. I think she has a negative attitude and I have a negative attitude about her negative attitude. We should find some way to get rid of our negative energy too.

I feel like everything is going to be okay, mostly.
I found out today that we have until March 31 to get caught up on our rent. We're behind because Kelly's money that we rely on hasn't been coming in and it should be coming in again at the end of March but we don't know for sure, and Kelly doesn't want to call and find out. This bugs me a lot! I want to know what is going to happen so that we can plan to adapt and make the best of the situation.

I do feel a bit fed up with our situation. I feel frustrated that things aren't 'perfect'. Sometimes I don't know what to do and react badly. I want Lily to listen and obey everything I say, and sometimes she does and sometimes she doesn't... which should be fine because I also want her to be a free-thinking individual. I want to have enough money to do everything I want to, and again, sometimes we do and sometimes we don't... and I don't want to be a mindless consumer subject to advertising and propaganda and collective conscious mass psyche mentality. I want everyone in the family to be positive and motivated and helping to work towards a better tomorrow, and sometimes we all are, and sometimes it doesn't look like we are. I also want everyone in the family to be true to their feelings and work through their challenges and past pain.. I want to inspire positive action.

I just have to remember to be patient with everyone and everything and with myself, but to keep working and moving forward. ~"Rome wasn't built in a day"

I also want to remember to keep my faith, even when it seems like those around me have lost it. My meditation friends would say: "you don't help someone that's stuck in a ditch by jumping in there and getting yourself stuck too!"

Sewing, woodworking and family stuff

2010-03-03T18:29:00.004-05:00

Yesterday, sewing was not of much interest the girls, even though Lily is better at it than I! However, Lily sewed most of a patch on her tights and I sewed a couple patches on my jeans. Other than that yesterday Lily and I had a battle of wills which was full of terrible parenting choices on my part. I think I expect too much of her, I can see that she is a beautiful, good, loving little girl and I can't stand to see her show behavior that doesn't line up with that. However, the stupid thing is that I let my frustration change my behavior into being an idiot parent and arguing and battling with her over where she sit in the car because I was frustrated that she wouldn't listen to me and stop 'play hitting each-other' with her sister. Looking back I should've just gotten out of the car, or driven us to the park or found something fun for us to all do. A battle of the wills leads to war and no-one wins in war, especially with a child with a strong will! My poor choices with Lily then spill over into my relationship with Kelly because Kelly has a history of being with men who disappoint her and I was starting to look like another disappointer..
So this is where my ideas sometimes stop me, but really it's not the idea of having children that give to each-other and communicate well and are respectful is a bad idea, but the ways I as I parent might try to go about accomplishing that can sometimes be more detrimental than good. So anyways, yesterday sucked and I felt like nothing will ever work and that I must be an idiot for trying to be a step-dad of 4 and trying to live a radical healthy life and a radical self sustaining life.
Even in the midst of all of that, I know that everything will be okay, giving up is not a choice and doing nothing and hiding from problems is not a choice either.
So I'm still trying to keep an eye on how I react with Lily and it is something I am going to have to put a lot of intention on... meditation, being present, being aware of what I'm expecting of her and really being aware of what is working and what is not and when things go sour, stepping back to wait for a heartfelt solution rather than one that comes from a frustrated mind.

So today I think was better, though I think Kelly is still mad at me for losing it with Lily. I got up and started the woodworking right away. We are going to saw apart some wooden pallets I found last year and use them to make shelves. I want the shelves to put our plants on in the window and Lily wants another shelf to put her barbies on. I told her she can have one shelf if she does most of the work on it, sanding and putting the oil finish on. She tried sawing for a while, we only got one board sawed since all I have right now is a handsaw. My friend, Charles, suggested I ask a friend for a circular saw, so I will have to do that! With a circular saw, which I can't afford right now, I could have the whole pallet taken apart in less than 20 minutes, I imagine. I could probably have the whole shelf built in a day. The girls have also been participating in watering our plants, which I love to see. Today Lily and I have gotten along pretty well except she had a freakout this morning when I told her I had thrown out the Honey Nut Cheerios.

I will have to do some more reading in 'you are your childs first teacher' and our Barbara Coloroso book and also 'the Biology of Transcendence for inspiration on having more patience with Lily's challenging behaviors.

Also, Lily came up with a yoga technique of her own today! She showed me to sit down and put my hands together as if in prayer and then breath in.. while breathing in I put my hands up and then when breathing out I bring my hands out and down. She also said to "breath out the bad stuff". When I did what she was showing me, it gave me chills.. in a powerful, healing, good way. Then she talked about how she could make money by having a yoga class and she could have people pay her what they could pay or give her something, but that everyone would have to give something to her. Pretty amazing idea! and a pretty effective yoga technique for a 6 year old to come up with on her own! She is a pretty amazing little girl and she demands that I be the amazing person that I want to be. There doesn't seem to be any room in this family for compromising. When we don't live healthy, things happen to us to force us to re-evaluate. and when we don't behave healthy, we push each-other's buttons so much that again, we are forced to re-evaluate how we are acting.

I want nothing more than to have a healthy family, live a healthy life and live each day with more joy and learning and love.

I am a very lucky man to be among these people and I have to be the man I want to be in order to stay here and see them grow up.

My mayan astrology says that I have to learn to be more like a garden hose and less like a lead pipe. That lesson is very apparent to me right now. That just because I think I know where I want to go, doesn't mean that straight there will be the easiest or healthiest path there. Who knows how I will get to where I want to be? Only god. and the path is always unveiling itself in every moment.

Tonight I am making nacho's for us. Not a healthy meal in any way, but a fun one. Nourishing to our fun and joy glands... since none of us have cancer right now, it isn't necessary for us to eat only raw everything, but I still want us to eat mostly raw everything!

This is one of those curves In the path I am talking about.

Tomorrow is sculpting/pottery day. We have some clay, so that will be fun. Kelly also has another midwife appointment and some other test to get done, so there is a chance the baby may come tomorrow.

All I know is that I am ready to roll with it, all the while keeping my eye on the present, but remembering to intend and work towards our more healthy and sustainable life.

Art/Craft Day 1!

2010-03-01T20:38:00.007-05:00

We had art/craft day today. We've been saving toilet paper rolls for a while, we had lots that we got rid of a few months ago because we still hadn't thought of a craft for them and it was getting a bit cluttery. Now we will have to save some more! Kelly found this craft online at http://www.mothering.com/discussions/showthread.php?t=613287. We painted the toilet paper rolls and taped the ends and then we can use them to build a 'log' cabin or playhouse! It was fun painting them, but the girls didn't want to do any more painting after painting the rolls.
I suspected that they may only want to paint for about 20 minutes. But we successfully did some art and craft time with something that is normally thrown out or recycled. and it is an ongoing project, as we save and paint more, eventually we can build a play house or a little log cabin to play with toys in!

Last night when I was talking to Lily about art day, she was asking if she would still be able to play video games! I am hoping that the kids will want to play games on the computer less. The boys are on video games a lot, sometimes constantly. I am hoping to inspire them out of this by finding other things that they might like to do. I am going to find a place to go fishing around here, so hopefully they will be interested in that. I went hiking with Zack a few weeks ago, but I'm not sure how interested in that he is.
Rose is coming down with something, we're pretty sure she has chicken pocks, she has some red dots on her back and a fever. We don't want to give Tylenol unless it gets really high. However, if she keeps waking up because of it, we will give some Tylenol because she needs sleep to get better. Another thing about these distinguished 'days' is that just because today is art and craft day doesn't mean we can't do other things and doesn't mean we cant do art and crafts on other days. We also went to fashawe conservation area and fed the birds and played in the snow for a while. I also did my first patch job tonight so that I will have a better idea of how to do some sewing tomorrow. I got a packet of a whole bunch of needles from sears.
It was a pretty good day other than some not so fun behavior from the girls on the way back from the conservation area, but I think we were all a bit grumpy, maybe feeling some of Rose's sicky energy. Let's hope for a good night's rest for her and for all of us so we can have a fun new day tomorrow.

Family Jam Night!

2010-02-28T20:08:00.005-05:00

We had our first family jam night tonight!
We decided to have sunday be music/dance day.
Tonight I played guitar and sang a little, Lily played the drum, Zack played bass guitar and Kelly played the shaker.
I think it went pretty well!
We recorded it, I will see if I can get it into my blog music player.
It is a little unsightly, but in the top left corner if you can scroll down and find the play button, you can hear the jam we had tonight!
It is very home made and not a professional recording in any way, but it is us all playing together.

What better way to create more family harmony than to do it with something you can feel and hear like music!
It has long been a dream of mine to have family jam sessions like this.
I am very happy that it happened and hope that it becomes a regular occurrence.

You can tell a lot about us, I think, by our behavior musically.
Lily is on rhythm, she has a good ear for music, she also has a dominating personality, wants to say when we start and stop! It is a necessary and helpful personality. I am also a bit of a dominating personality in the situation, but also hoping for everyone to play together. Kelly in this situation is a backbone of rhythm and sits with a smile emitting joy into the room. Zack is playing the bass fast, experimenting with more and more notes, seeming to pay most of his attention to what he is playing himself, but he seems to be harmonizing well in his way.
I found myself timid to sing, but tried to a bit. Kelly said 'no' to singing, but participated all the same. I think she has a lot of musical talent that she doesn't give herself credit for. Her voice is easier on the ears than mine and she played the piano very well when she was young and I know she still can!
I could probably read into each of or behaviors more, but we'll leave it at this.. we all have different personalities and each of us has to find a balance in learning to express ourselves and listen and harmonize with eachother. I think this was a beautiful start and we are doing well, and we have more we can learn!

Water Car

2010-02-27T22:40:00.010-05:00

I've been discussing this with my cousin Josh who is an auto mechanic and am now seeking info from my other cousin who is a geologist who I hear has tried getting a car to run off of water.

I've dreamed of having a car that runs on water for years, now there is a website talking about people around the world who are doing it.

this one specific article is a man talking about how he converted his corvette to run on water.
http://www.waterpoweredcar.com/s1r9a9m9_water_car.pdf

Josh says he doesn't know how it would work since it would need something combustible, I think that would be the hydrogen right? and I have heard many times that it takes a lot of energy to separate hydrogen from oxygen, but there must be an easy way that doesn't require a lot of energy.

On another note,
We watched Temple Grandin tonight.
very super awesome, very inspiring!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RHxxOKnH9YE

I feel very excited and am reminded to stay grounded!

I am planning to do an experiment to try to get a car to run off of water this year. I will need some plans, I will need to do research on the easiest, cheapest and best plan! I will probably want to get a cheap car to experiment on so that we still have our van to use in case the experiment takes a while. I hope that I can find a mechanic that will want to help with it, but according to some plans I've seen, I don't have to know a lot about cars to be able to do it.

One reason I stopped thinking about making a car run off of water was because of hearing that men who had invented and created cars that run off of water were bullied by governments and large corporations and even assassinated.
Even if that is all true, I can't stop from making dreams reality because of fear!
A lot of people I have talked to about it just think it isn't possible, "not in our lifetime" I have heard. But I believe it has been done and can be done, so this year I will try it and find out!
It looks like the key is creating an efficient way to separating hydrogen from oxygen. Electrolysis is a common process used to separate the hydrogen atom from the 2 oxygen atoms in a water molecule. So this should be a fun year full of experiments and research!

some additional water car info:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GDHT0hBgVOw
http://www.waterfuelcellkitsreviews.com/
http://waterpoweredcar.com/
http://www.waterpoweredcarplans.com/
Jack Nicholson's water powered car in 1978

A plan

2010-02-27T13:51:00.002-05:00

I have had a lot of creative and productive energy today.. I did lots of cleaning and came up with some ideas of how to improve harmony with the girls. So I decided that each day of the week will have an activity planned to keep us learning new stuff. Monday will be drawing and painting day, tuesday will be sewing day, Wednesday will be woodworking day, Thursday will be pottery and sculpting day, Friday will be Science experiment day, Saturday will be give and volunteer day. I am excited about this plan as it makes it so I can plan activities but not get overwhelmed with what to do on each day... at the beginning of this year in September we were trying to do a bunch of activities through the day like in regular school, but that got very tiring and there was not a lot of motivation on my part, Kelly's part or Lily's part to keep up a busy learning schedule. So this schedule will keep us active, but still leave lots of free time to do other things. Reading and writing and math and further learning activities can be done anytime and hopefully we'll be inspired to do them more while following the basic frame of doing at least one learning/creating activity a day.

I am also still excited about headed to having a self sustaining house. a few weeks ago Kelly and I found the documentary 'garbage warrior' online and watched it, a few weeks after watching 'no impact man'. In 'garbage warrior', it is the story of the man who invented 'earth ships'. Self sustaining homes that are built out of recycled materials. He uses tires filled with dirt as the foundation and insulation on the northern, east and west sides of the house and then lines the south side of the house with windows to let in heat and light in the winter. The homes collect rain water and use water pumps powered by solar panels to distribute water very efficiently and abundantly throughout the house. The homes look very different on the outside, but on the inside have all of the amenities of a regular home... kitchen with a stove and running water, toilets showers etc. the water is reused so that the rainwater is used for washing dishes and taking showers etc then grey water is reused in the toilet and then black water is used for watering plants outside. Some of the homes have greenhouses inside that provide enough food for a family to live off of.

I want to have one of the ones with the green house inside, or at least have a fair amount of food producing plants inside to have fruit year round!

Also I found yesterday a website about water powered cars! It has been a dream of mine since I was 16, I think, to have a car that runs off of water! There was a story about a man who converted his corvette to run on water, and it ignited the hydrogen like a combustion engine ignites gas! it sounded very very cool and I want one, but I don't yet know enough about cars or electricity to understand what he did or be able to do it myself!

Our herb garden is growing taller and I think will be ready to be moved into a pot soon. I found online directions of how to grow an indoor avacado plant! it would be soooo awesome to have home grown avacados! I also want some lemon plants and orange plants, tomato plants etc.

I've been making myself carrot and apple smoothies, inspired by the Gerson Therapy where one guy talks about how he cured his cancer by drinking carrot and apple juice. Since we don't have a juicer, it's smoothies for me. I like them a lot, Kelly and Lily don't.. but maybe I will descover a way to make them taste better to them. I suspect though, that it will really be up to them to decide to experience eating more raw fruit and veggies and much less refined grains and sugars.

We were at the thrift store for a short while today because we were hoping to get a rocking chair we saw there a few days ago, but it was gone. We were then looking at the toys to get one to reward Rose for pooping on the potty for the first time yesterday! All of the toys were plastic and junky and I was inspired and motivated to make some home made wooden toys.. the only wood I have right now though is some pallets outside that I can't tear apart with my current tools, I think I need a wedge.. and I have some sticks that I've brought up from being outside. When I set aside some time, I want to try making a toy wooden airplane.. something plain that leaves lots of room for imagination!

I want to slowly transition from having plastic toys to having all wooden toys. Right now we have probably 1/4 wooden/ hand made wool toys and 3/4 plastic/metal toys and synthetic stuffed animals.

I am also excited to find a place for us to all volunteer together. Lily has been exhibiting selfish and greedy behavior more often than I would like and I am hoping to inspire her to be more giving and compassionate. Not that she is not ever giving and compassionate, she often is, but she often seems to forget the importance of giving and helping. I must not be modeling it well enough and not exposing her to kind and giving behavior enough. So committing to do something to give or volunteer once a week will hopefully help us to be more giving and compassionate as a family!

That is about it for now, things look hopeful and I am full of productive energy still!

The next step will be putting ideas and dreams into action.

Yeah!

2010-02-26T20:30:00.000-05:00

This is my first blog on blogger.

I used to post blogs on myspace a lot, back in the day...

but this is today!

haha

I didn't know what to use for my title, so I used 'put it in a dirt farm'. . it was the first thing I thought of. Kelly, my partner has a blog titled 'beauty in the dirt', so I thought I'd have mine connected somehow... and really dirt is beautiful. We need good dirt to grow healthy wonderful plants, one of the main building blocks for life on our planet! A song came to my head once a few years ago with the words "put it in a dirt farm".. at the time it made no sense and I shared it with my friends and it was lots of fun.. but now I think it has something to do with where I am headed. I want to create a furtile life. A life that creates the opportunity for more beauty. I want to build a self sustaining home, I want to create a family life that is full of harmony, I want to share ideas and give to my partner, my family and my community from my heart. I want to be the best man that I can be and I want to help humanity to be the compassionate super intelligent beautiful creative force that it is.

I don't think humanity uses its creativity the best way it could..

I think a lot of humanity is stuck, reacting and living in animal mode or survival mode or greedy mode!

So that's my start.

Rock and roll.