Pause… Reset: Faith

I’ve graduated. I’ve had time to settle down. Now I have to make a plan to rebuild my life! I’ve broken my personal life down into 4 main sections: Faith, Family, Food, Frugal Living and Homesteading. Welcome to my journey.

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All the other items that I’m meditating on (family, food, frugal living and homesteading) are a family commitment. Faith, well faith is a personal commitment. Yes, my family practices together. But the reality is that we need to make this a personal journey. I’ve always wondered and struggled with what part faith plays in my life. I’m really good at not knowing how to describe my faith. I’m a:

• Christian

I can easily describe myself as a Christian – I believe in God, I believe in Jesus, I believe… I feel like I should continue on with the Nicene Creed. I have a wonderful church home and I’m working on building a place for myself there. I’m involved in children’s church, adult education and the kitchen. My daughter is in the children’s choir. I have an online bible study that I facilitate that gets me into my bible on a daily basis. I love where I am in my Christianity at this point in time.

I also identify as a mystical / esoteric Christian. I am deeply rooted on this wonderful planet. I follow the turning of the seasons and enjoy celebrating the bounty this wondrous place God has given us – gives us! I celebrate the seasons and enjoy the entirety of the day – opening to close. I love watching the stars and getting out into nature. I love the history and the stories of my faith and the faiths of others. I feel God – at church, at home, in my garden, at my work, in other people – everywhere.  

I am working on a list of action steps to further my faith.

• Learn more about the Episcopalian tradition
• Continue as a facilitator with LGG – including joining with someone else’s group to deepen my faith.
• Keep a clean home. This sounds weird in this section but I want to be able to feel God – not stress – in my most important space!
• Identify routines and rituals to celebrate my daily and yearly existence. I’m taking a class at church right now on Celtic Christianity – I am going to frame some of the prayers and start to use them!
• Meditate at least twice a week.

In truth, I want to just be Kim. My faith helps me to be just that.

Pause… Reset: Family

Yay, I’ve graduated. That’s all fine and wonderful.Now I have to make a plan to rebuild my life! I’ve broken my personal life down into 4 main sections: Family, Food, Frugal Living and Homesteading. Welcome to my journey.

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After a 2 year hiatus in working with and thinking about my family, I am pleased to say that we have learned a lot about who we are – both the good and the bad.

• The TV is not the babysitter we want for our child.
• Cell phones are a MAJOR distraction for the adults of the house.
• Eva and I  love Minecraft.
• Crafting and creating is a priority in our relationships.
• Moving our bodies – hiking, walking, playing in the playground

That said, we obviously will need to work on ourselves and our family as we continue through life. Here are some of the items that come to the forefront as things we do well or things we need to strive towards:

• Make crafting and reading the go-to activities of our family, not Netflix, cell phones, Facebook, and zoning out.
• Date Nights. Wow. The idea of having a date night is a novel concept in itself!
• Eva is an extremely social child. I plan to have friends over and sleepovers for her to encourage this side of her.
• Time together. No matter what we do – Minecraft, Snapchat, Netflix, crafting, reading, game playing, chicken watching – WHATEVER, I want to make sure that we are spending lots of good time together because we WANT to be together. I love my family and am lucky to have them.

As we follow this urban homesteading path, we will need to keep the family unit in the center of everything we do. Cooking, canning, gardening, chicken keeping, frugal living, and more is great when it works for our family. Everything we do – or don’t do – needs to align with our family values at that time in our lives. These will change as time goes on.

Wish us luck!

 

 

 

I’ve Graduated

After 2 years working full time and going to school to get my masters, I can honestly and proudly say that I have graduated with my Masters (Intervention Specialist. It’s a Special Education degree for special education teachers. In the state of Colorado, it’s a specialist license. Say that three times fast!).

While I am very proud of myself, I know that I have given up many things on my quest towards self-sufficiency to earn this degree. We lived for a year on rotisserie chickens and bagged salads. No lie. My pantry hasn’t been cleaned out in 2 years. Cooking?! Ha! That happened infrequently and if I did cook, it was something like eggs. Quick, easy, yummy. Speaking of my pantry, I do not have a months supply of food, much less a week in there. Planning ahead flew out the window in the face of homework, choir appointments for Eva and just trying to remember that I am also a wife and mother. I grew a garden last year but never put the garden to bed (so I had decomposing tomatoes under the snow this past winter. Gross.).

Playing with the kid

Fun hairdos! 

A year

Hey good folks! It’s been a year since we last spoke. It’s been a good year – I started classes right after the last post. Life got crazy – it still is crazy! I’m in my masters program, E’s In school and choir – our only saving grace is that C is not in school or we would be hard pressed to make this work! Life is good – I am looking forward to a year of intentional living!

2014: The Garden

Dreaming of spring:
We planted pea sprouts today (a week late), trimmed trees (2 weeks late), and did general clean up around the garden (3 months late!). We’ve had onions (Egyptian Walking Onions) and chives for a while, and the rhubarb (all three plants – yes, I like rhubarb!) is looking fabulous. We gathered our courage and pruned our 6 fruit trees taking off 80% or so of the limbs. It physically hurt me to do that!

We’ll focus on what will give us the biggest bang for our buck this year and leave the “fun” stuff to others! I’ll be back as time goes on to document the planting and then the harvesting!

Enjoy!

Life

Life moves by so fast nowadays. The little-est is no longer so little (she turned 7 in January) and she is a bit camera shy. And by a big, I will say that she closes her eyes anytime the camera comes around! I stopped bringing the camera around – I need to continue to take pictures. I need to remember that every memory counts!

Here are a few memories over the last little while:

oops

Sorry E. I haven’t updated the blog in forever. Here you go for some recent past!

Last week we were invited to my grandfather’s 85th birthday party in Connecticut. My brothers and sister were there which makes it the first time since February 2008 that we were all in the same place. Crazy. Also, It seemed as though all of my mother’s family were there too. Including 14 of her 15 cousins and lots of their kids and grand kids. All but one of my cousins were there as well. He is in Nairobi by the way. What follows is a whole bunch of Pictures of the festivities:

Garden update July 11

The summer is upon us – full swing. We have a total of 6 fruit trees, a large strawberry bed, raspberry canes (that will really start producing next summer – my bad!), an asparagus bed on its second year, an asparagus bed on its first year, herbs, tomatoes, jalapeños, beans, lettuce, rhubarb (who knew rhubarb was so amazing? I planted another 2 plants that you’ll see below because I loved the one from last year so much!).

Here’s the side yard,