Chillaxin', Or Plumbing Our Depths While Reaching New Heights.......

Something odd has been going on around here, lately. I'm not going to characterize it as good or bad - it really is both, or neither. But it is very different from the path we'd been on, and it seems to have set each of us into a bit of a dervish, each seeking our balance in the midst of it all. For a few weeks, we all seemed to be spinning off in our own directions, like tops spun together, or galaxies fleeing each other, stretching out our universe.

Our incredible spring, summer and fall has given way to intense ----- hibernation. We can't seem to get motivated to do things outside the house, the kids and I. We talk about it, we feel we want to -but there seems to be this inertia, almost like a force field holding us, pretty much, here at home.

The thing about living our life, as a family, according to our natural rhythms, is that our natural rhythms aren't always complementary. At times, they aren't even compatible.

Personalize a photo slideshow

At the moment, the last few pictures are old - I need to replace them, but not sure I'm up to connecting the external hard drive tonight!

That used to really throw me so far off kilter that I would panic, thinking that things would never settle out, never return to a more predictable pattern. Because, of course, as a grownup, I value predictability and patterns, knowing what to expect and following through on what we have decided to do.

And because, no matter if they value these things or not, Jeremiah and Annalise are constantly evolving, growing, changing, and very very seldom in predictable patterns. They grow and change as they were meant to, in the manner of flames, or flowers, or waves.

We're spinning a little closer, these days, settling once more into orbits around the common axis of our family. After a few weeks of wildly divergent journeys, it feels right to be returning to center in the time of so many spiritual celebrations. It's the time to hibernate, and after the gorge of activities and new ideas, and the grouchy, growly settling-in period, we no longer seem to find our cave quite so restrictive. We're yawning, stretching, settling in for our long winter's nap.

It's not that we've stopped going places; just that the frenetic pace has waned, and now outings are more the exception than a simple matter of course. Jim has begun taking the children to more places, like the credit union, Chuck E.Cheese's, the local feed store, restaurants, mall bounce areas, games shops, and assorted stores, as well as to the home of their favorite cousins several times. Together, as a family, we've gone out to Mr. Fuji's, a local Japanese restaurant Jim had been wanting to try. I've taken them on an errand or three, and to the Live and Learn Co-op Thanksgiving party.

And now, after a sedate November and early December, where a lot of TV and a lot of computer and video games, and just general hanging around, inside and out, we have begun to shift into a more creative mode. These photos will be being added to and edited as I add more and more pictures of our creative, at-home life........