Friday, March 28, 2008

43 and time for ME to just BE

Once again, with more bloody rain, our recent thoughts about getting a house seemed like a great idea. The packing and unpacking on our recent trip was a bother too and we were a bit fed up and emotional after the past weekend.

Once again, when we calmed down, and the rain stopped for 30 minutes, we remembered how much we enjoy this lifestyle. Before our trip, we had been using the annexe from the old camper for this one. But we are going to sell the old one so we need to rig up some walls to attach onto the awning, or somehow fix things so we have more space and protection from the elements.

Now that we are back here, for around 3 months (more or less, we'll see how it goes), we will get a nice set up and work on getting a comfortable rhythm going with homeschooling friends and fun classes for the kids.

Glad that decision is made. Today (the 28th) is my 43rd birthday. Happy birthday to me!! My motto for the coming year is in the title of this blog. I will be taking more time for me. When I saw my sister last weekend, she handed down her old bike to me plus two other bikes for Sami and AJ. AJ is thrilled and has been having a great time with his bike. I've been enjoying riding my bike too. I feel like a kid again as distant memories of a carefree me riding way beyond the boundaries set by my Mum, come back as soon as my feet touch the pedals. I guess I'm still pushing my Mum's boundaries which is why she has trouble accepting my lifestyle.

So I have made a decision to Just Be - more present, more connected, more awake and aware, more loving, more joy-full, more...well, more ME.

...I didn't get to finish this post earlier. I was in a grateful mood, just enjoying our day and not doing much. Cary came home and said he had arranged something and we needed to leave about 30 minutes later. He kept the surprise until he took me to a lovely place called 'The Sanctuary' which has a bunch of alternative / natural healers & bodyworkers that work there. They have a natural dentist, chiropractor, natural hair dresser, and offer other natural health and beauty services. I had a one hour massage with a Tradional Chinese Medicine guy followed by a one hour facial. Cary and the kids picked me up and we went home where Nicholas and I had a two hour nap. I had a bunch of phone calls during the day and capped it all off with a delicious dinner at a funky vegetarian restaurant. What a great day.

Thursday, March 27, 2008

quick update

10 days ago we packed up our nice little camp on the Gold Coast. We took a 4 hour drive south, set up camp again for 3 nights. We caught up with some friends, sorted through our storage unit, and called in at the steiner/waldorf school that Sami and AJ used to go to. Sami had left her recorder there so we had to go back. We happened to go there when they were having their autumn festival / harmony day celebration. The festival was lovely and it was nice to see some familiar faces and friends, but it was also nice to leave.

After a busy time there, we drove 3 hours south to my Mums place, in our camper, for 3 nights. My brother and his fiance and my sister and her whole family arrived later that day. We were hoping for a fun Easter weekend together. It was nice to see everyone else but unfortunately, my mother was stressed from the moment we arrived, building the tension to a peak the night before we left, directing her frustrations at me - saying that my diet and children are all too difficult and that she cannot "come down" to the level of how we live. Nice. So here's my diet: fruit for breakfast, salad and tortilla or bread for lunch, salad and veges with potato or rice for dinner. Snacks are usually nuts or a smoothie or hummus and seaweed crackers. I don't vary much from that except for a vege burger or maybe pizza every now and again. Very difficult. My children are young and spirited.
I'm not going to go into any more detail. It's just sad that she feels this way. We will not be going back there.

We packed up and left as early as we could and drove 3 hours north to the camp site we'd been at before. Set up again, caught up with friends and crashed out, emotionally drained. We were going to leave the next morning but decided a day to just 'chill' was in order so, after a little trip to storage and the shops , we did just that. Kind of necessary anyway as Nicholas came down with a fever for about 12 hours.

The next day, we packed up again, drove 4 hours north back to the spot where we'd been 10 days ago. Shortly after setting up, a massive storm hit with sideways rain and strong winds.

We have come to the conclusion that we just cannot keep doing this, this way. For a more comfortable life "on the road", we need a much bigger rig. We are going to look for a little house to at least get us through the winter and just see what happens after that.
I had surrendered into this lifestyle, I accepted all of the little inconveniences and worked around them, no longer getting impatient and frustrated. Lesson learned. Time to move on.

Sunday, March 09, 2008

AJ the amazing pineapple


I forgot to post this pic from a couple of months ago when we went to the science center. A little trick photography.
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Photos!


This is Wellington Point, a lovely spot near Brisbane where we recently met some unschooling friends. This is low tide and we walked out to the little island just before the tide came in. It was a lovely day.


friend: "what's your name?"
the little boy above answered "noo noo"
friend: "how old are you?"
boy: "two and a huff"


We met the Brisbane unschooling group at a great park in Ipswitch. AJ loved the long flying fox...


and riding scooters with noo noo.

more photos


Noo Noo ran to meet Cary as he came back from a walk on the beach with Sami. Love the colour of the water and sand!


We found a fabulous park near us that has this pedal-powered monorail around it. That's me on the back of the blue one with Sami and AJ trying to ram me. Nice!



And now he can ride a two wheeler! This photo is taken from the front of our place. You can see the water in the background. It only takes a minute to walk there.

even more photos


Mr two and a huff....such a cheeky monkey!


Let's go fly a kite!


Our new camper / home. I think we measured it at 22' opened up. That's a king size bed on the left. It's so easy to fold up and sweet to tow.


My new ride! Ms Mercedes Benz thank you very much.
Behind her you'll see that we have the brown annexe from the old camper attached to the new one. The new one came with a fold out awning and we are going to have 3 sides made for it so we can use it as a room and get some protection from the elements. We use that room a lot for food prep and cooking, eating and storage of food and clothes.

Last week

Another busy week. We spent more time exploring this new area. We got our library cards and spent some time enjoying the new library. This one has a playstation, computers in the kids section complete with internet access and large-button keyboards, lots of DVD's - and books! - to choose from, self check out, friendly staff and a nice feel.

In other news:
* We looked at some possible houses to rent. I actually spent a lot of time on this - online, looking at newspapers and flyers from real estate agents, the street directory and driving around. I was starting to get annoyed about the whole process. It wasn't feeling 'right'. Of course I received another great quote from Abraham:

When you feel enthusiasm to do something, it means you've lined up the Energy, and you are being inspired to take action from that point of alignment. When you don't feel like doing it, don't push yourself, because your effort is not worth it. But, when you line up the Energy, the feeling of procrastination goes away.
Excerpted from a workshop in San Rafael, CA on Sunday, July 31st, 2005 All Is Well

I felt like I was spending too much time "do-ing" and not enough time "be-ing". I love this exact area. I realised I do not want to move to a house - yet. I'm enjoying our new camper, this park with tons of kids - even homeschooled and traveling kids!, being right on the water and minutes away from a national park with fabulous trails just right for the kids. I had no enthusiasm for looking for a house so I let it go. We did find one place, right on the water and already furnished that we like. The agents have not returned any of our calls on it though. So I'm not looking anymore. If they call us on that one place, we'll see what happens. Right now, I'm enjoying the moments right here, right now. The freedom that comes with this life is not something I'm going to give up lightly.

* AJ was out playing with some friends who were riding their bikes around. AJ has never shown interest in riding a bike. He's been riding a razor scooter since he was 2 or 3 and seemed happy with that. But a few days ago, Cary noticed him watching his friends closely on their bikes. Cary casually suggested to one of them "why don't you teach AJ how to ride that?". Several friends got involved in the initial stages of instruction then just left him alone. Within 20 minutes, AJ was riding around the block confidently, like he'd been doing it for years.

* Nicholas seemed to grow about 2 inches this past week. His legs look longer and his PJ pants have gotten a lot shorter. He sometimes says "look at my long legs!". He is so outgoing. He often gets up in the morning and announces that he's going out to look for his friends. Quite sure of himself in all matters, he has an opinion on everything and freely expresses it. Usually at top volume too!

* Sami returned from the bathroom one day happily telling me that she had made a new friend. It turns out that her new friend is a grandmother from New Zealand. Got to love homeschooling and the fact that she is not limited to the mindset of only having friends her own age.

* Cary went to some car auctions in Brisbane with a new car dealer friend he has made here. It felt good to him to kind of get back into things and is absorbing a lot of new information on rules and regs here. A little frustrating at times for him, but he's loving the area and I'm sure it won't be long before he has it all figured out. An exciting part about this is the new (second-hand) Mercedes station wagon he brought home on Friday as an early birthday present for me. It's beautiful - white, with a grey interior, CD player and 7 seats. In excellent condition too. I'm a lucky gal!

* I've felt a bit down at times this past week. There are some changes I need to make in how I take care of myself and how I listen to my body and spirit. I need to remember to take time for me and just BE. At one low point, I thought about deleting this blog and removing myself from a whole bunch of email groups. But I didn't get a chance to get online, and I got over myself pretty quickly. I don't know why I can't remember all of the great lessons I've learned recently in books like Conversations with God and Abraham books. If I'm not currently reading something like that, I tend to slip into old patterns too easily. Perhaps it's the recently move and trying to get settled here. ....You know what? I cannot blame any external factor - it's me. I am the one who sabotages myself. Why? Just when I think I'm going along so well, here comes the old me, not willing to be forgotten. Looking back, I have changed a lot - in a positive way. My periods of negativity are a lot less and last shorter periods of time. I'm getting to where I feel calm contentment most of the time. And maybe those periods of dark just serve to remind me of how great the light is.

I'm not going to delete this blog. It's therapy for me. Writing has always helped me figure things out. I don't care if I'm not the most eloquent or even if no one reads this. Funny thing is, just when I think this blog is boring or too whiny, a friend emails me to say they've been reading it. I treasure all of those gold friends who, despite time, distance and changes in circumstances, still keep in touch. Thanks and love to you.

* One afternoon this past week, we went for a stroll along the creek to the breakwall where the creek meets the sea. On the opposite shore of the creek, at the base of a bushy-rainforest hill that is a National Park, there was a young man playing his trumpet. Deep, soulful melodies that fitted the sunset mood of the place perfectly. An unexpected gift to a beautiful moment.

* AJ is so excited about his birthday and talks about it every single day. We still have 38 days to go. Looks like he might be getting a new bike for his birthday!

* One day when we went swimming in the enclosure at the creek, I paddled on boogy boards with Sami out to the deepest edge. She had been wanting to go out that far, but was a bit nervous. After going there one time with me, she later happily went out there by herself telling me that she had told herself "I am confident....I can do this". That's a big step for her and I'm glad that she figured this out.

And that's about it for the main highlights of the week, in words. I will now attempt to post some photos.

Saturday, March 01, 2008

moving in

We did it! It took 10 hours to move everything out of our old place, pack up two cars, drive to our new place (via the mall where we had to return some library books found during the packing and get a new game for the PS2), drop off the old camper, pick up the new, set it up and move everything in. I guess 10 hours isn't bad - if we were moving in/out of a regular house, it would be a process that would have taken days if not weeks.

Got to say, I feel so good being here. Even though we've had some drizzly rain and a lot of wind, my energy levels are way up. I feel like running and skipping and doing cartwheels! I love being next to the water!

Everyone we've met here - the locals and other travelers, have all been so friendly and helpful.

We do like the area and would like to stay here for quite a while. We got a PO Box in the area and drove past some houses for rent. Then we met a traveling homeschooling family and went in their big 5th wheel trailer. Oh yeah... I like that a lot. I could totally stay on the road with a much bigger rig like that! This would make a pretty good home base but we could take other trips from here depending on the weather and our moods.

Our kids have been enjoying the fact that there are a lot more kids visiting this park. And having 3 traveling homeschooled kids as neighbours is so much fun. Unfortunately, they will be moving on in a week. So we'll enjoy their company now and who knows, we may meet up with them again?! We spent this afternoon hanging out with them at the creek while the children all swam in a large area that has a big net around it to prevent the odd shark or other ocean critter from getting in.

AJ has found other things to talk about besides his non-stop conversations about the games on the PS2 and who was going to play what and how to do something and who was going to play first etc. He's been looking at the game manuals and reading them. I guess when you're so excited about something you can do anything - even teach yourself how to read!