the morning piece to our family connection formula

Hello, Darling ♥

I have been on some more deep business journeying recently ♥

And exploring the details of making my life my business has had me reflecting on my life. 

I have been thinking a lot about what makes my family so deeply connected, and about how our family learns and the enrichment we integrate into our living of learning. 

This morning, as I was snuggling my baby, I realized that I wanted to share our formula for deep family connection. 

I want to share it as a story, as if you walked through a day in our life with us.

Today, I want to share with you our mornings.

The first piece is that we have always had a family bed. I grew up in a family bed, so I have literally always had one. This is a big piece to our family connection formula. 

When I talk to new mamas about why we cosleep and why I recommend it, I ask them if they can imagine if they slept in a separate bed from their lover or partner or spouse. 

That same bonding and deepening of the relationship happens when I cuddle and snuggle and entwine and cozy up to my babies every night. We spend the whole night every night with our arms am wrapped around each other, spooning, legs entwined, tucked into the cocoon of our blankets, dreaming together, breathing together, keeping each other warm. 

When I wake, every morning, I spend a moment soaking in and savoring the warm cuddles of my babies. I open up to allowing myself to feel aligned and ready for an incredible day before I rise. 

The next thing I do is spend some time preparing, in solitude, for my day. That usually happens in the front seat of my van or (if its warm), I will drive to a park and sit in the grass right by the van. I always face something that nourishes my soul - usually that is nature - so my pauses in my morning focused time connect me to my source. 

And this time usually involves my journal and wifi - I catch up on Facebook, journal about what has been pulling at my heart or what I am feeling inspired toward. I might do some business research, or experience a new tool for personal release or personal growth. I pay visit to some soul-delicious family learning inspiration and other inspiration for things I am focusing my intentions on in life. 

I usually wake 2 to 4 hours before my kids do. So, this is my deep focus time. This is the time I need to plug into my Source, so that I am available to be the mama I want to be throughout the rest of the day. 

When my kids awake (often one before another), I light up upon seeing them and greet them with enthusiasm, and we proceed to reunite with big hugs and lots of nose nuzzling. We hold each other's faces and look into each others eyes. We kiss each other all over our faces. We hug for long periods of time. We deeply reconnect in preparation for our day together. 

If they seem still sleepy, I might climb back into the bed with them and cuddle them a bit and talk about things that will nourish their soul and light their inspire embers. We might talk about what we want to do for the day or in more depth about something we love or what we want for breakfast. Whatever we feel mutually drawn toward.

And only when we are ready to LEAP out of bed in glee, do we climb out and get ready for our day (dressed, teeth brushed, etc). Except my teenager - she doesn't usually leap, unless we have something extra exciting in store for her, so she eases(and she usually wakes up much later than the rest of us. 

I am in the internal planning stages of adding some new pieces to our morning routine. I want to incorporate some massage and dreamtalk into our first awakening time together. And I want to incorporate meditation, deep breathing, and body stretching into our early mornings. 

We usually eat a light fresh nutrient-based breakfast - sometimes also high-protein. It starts our day together off in a great way. And I notice the differences in my body and our togetherness when we eat in different ways. 

I know that starting our days off in this way is a key to our family's success in loving connective being. I am excited about how I see my children unfolding as people and in their own lives because of these blessed mornings we share together.

What is your morning routine?

What would you like it to be?

How can you shift your life to open up space to create the kind of morning that makes you available for your day?

I love you,

 

p.s. - I still have spots open in my Sacred Mama Mentoring if you would like to join me in helping your family to live a more connected and loving life. 

 

~rainbow mondays~ Dove Park

Hey, Loves! ♥

I'm aware that it is Wednesday. Bear with me. 

We have been out in the community this last week, so we wanted to share a rainbow from our favorite park :))

Pink: that skirt

Red: that slide that makes those... smiles haha

Orange: that ball that I spin them in until the squeal

Yellow: that boat that pulls...

Green: that turtle :)

Blue: that quickly growing boy('s shirt)

Gray: that backdrop for flying feet

Black-ish: silhouette-ish of aforementioned growing boy 

~rainbow mondays~

 an opportunity to share some color from our week of travel and connection

inspired by our beloved mb

In Gratitude Thursdays

Mmmm, hello, Love ♥

Mindfulness about the abundance of things I live in gratitude of is a practice I savor. 

It enhances our feeling of OM during our travels and when we are still. 

I'm honored and exuberant to share my gratitude with you. May it bring you peace and awareness, as well ♥

Today, I am especially grateful for the rich nourishing earth. 

The way it grounds me. The way it lights me up. The way it always offers me a space to feel at hOMe. 

When I am feeling off, I just sit and open up, and I find clarity and peace. 

I am so grateful for the earth beneath me today.

What are you in gratitude of today?

Namaste,

~tribe tuesday~ Nina

When we lived in Encinitas, Cali, Tuesdays were our favorite day of the week.

It started with a volunteer at the food line that warmed out hearts and lit us up with his kindness and radiating love ♥ They also had REALLY good food that day. 

Then the library showed a movie on the big screen, and it was like going to the theater. 

And then the big magic happened. A huge community meal at our favorite park. The people who gathered for this meal, to serve or to be served, were exceptional. There was such a sense of community togetherness and love. Some of our dearest friends we met there. 

So, in honor of the Tuesdays we are ever aware of, even though the miles between us are many, I present to you...

Tribe Tuesdays. 

On ~tribe tuesdays~ I will be sharing a beloved member of our tribe. 

Our tribe makes our world go round, and I honor each of you here ♥

This week, I honor my sisterhood with Nina ♥

Can you tell we adore each other? :))

I met Nina at the Rethinking Everything Conference in August. It feels like a lifetime of knowing ♥

She and I share many soul-delicious ways of being. We are pirate sisters, taking charge of our lives and sailing the high seas. We are earth and spirit magic people. We are real, and we keep it that way. We are mamas to unschooling families. We share a drive to touch the lives of people, especially women, in ways that nourish and expand them. 

This woman rocks my socks, helps me unstick my stuckness, supports me in my rising, and accepts me in every state I find myself ♥

That is what my tribe is about ♥

~rainbow mondays~ Suezanne's house

Hello, Loves ♥

I'm doing it.

I finally found the perfect weekly ritual for my blog, that both honors our gypsy lifestyle and provides opportunities for keepsake journey photos.

~rainbow mondays~ was started by my beloved MB as a way to start the week off with a splash of color.

Our gypsy twist is to share photographs from where we find ourselves on Mondays.

So, today, we find ourselves at our darling Suezanne's house, in Grapevine, Texas (near Dallas).

And these are some special color symbols from our visit ♥

Black & White: that gorgeous couple (Suezanne's oldest daughter, Julian, who we adore, and her fiance)

Blue: that china we drink delicious exotic teas from daily

 Green: that cozy seat I love to work from

 

 

Yellow: that awesome owl art on the fence outside the window :)

 

 

Orange: that pumpkin she picked for its funky stem

 

 

Red: that delicious food she is always making me ♥

 

 

Pink: that art all over the walls

 

 

Purple: those sandals on that gorgeous hippy mama 

 

 

~rainbow mondays~

 an opportunity to share some color from our week of travel and connection

inspired by our beloved mb

radical acceptance

Oh, Darling ♥

I had visions of kids who spent all their free time outdoors, digging up worms and referencing bugs in one of those bug-kind-of-reference books...

Ha!

I had visions of earthy shades of browns and oranges for my boy. Cargo shorts. Dirt-smudged cheek.

Not much different for my girls. Except lots of sun dresses.

All waldorfy, with plains and mis-matched patterns, and all wood, organic cotton, and felted toys.

I dreamed of spending 99% of our spare time as one of those "ideal unschooling families" who flow from one incredible "obviously academic" interests into another.

My baby, although 2 1/2 years (to the day) younger than my son, would be at the same academic level.

Because we would spend all day together investigating and exploring nature in rain or shine, reading books, writing in our nature journals, building with natural materials, playing homemade board games, observing our science experiments growing in windowsills, handcrafting our own toys, and eating local whole organic non-GMO raw vegan foods.

Yeah, not so much ♥

 

Sure, I could probably make any of that happen. But that's not what this blog post is about.

This post is about loving right where we are when we aren't living up to our own ideals.

I love those ideals. I hold them in my heart, and they make me smile. Sometimes, even chuckle.

And I'm okay with the times when they make me a little sad, a little disappointed, a little grieving over my dreams.

It's all a part of the process.

And I'm not here to tell anyone that we shouldn't do this or want that. I just like to all come back to here, now, the present.

I like to chuckle over the disparity between who I envisioned my kids as, and who they are.

And I like to bask in the ways that my kids make my heart melt - in the ways I had hoped, and the ways they surprise me.

I like to open myself up. To see their world through their eyes. To jump on their bandwagon that is playing the tuba of joy over Ben 10. Or the trumpet of pride over a new karate move.

I like to open myself up, and see what's coming up for me.

Do some choices feel "better" to me than others? Why might that be?

What is it I am really wanting for my kids? Where do my deeper desires meet my own values and intentions?

Is there something I am wanting to grow or develop in my own life, even if my kids aren't interested? Am I projecting my own desires onto ideals about my kids?

Could they just fake it for a most treasured photo for me once? Bwahaahaaaahahahahaha ;)

When I check in inside and ask what's going on for me, what shows up? And how skilled am I about keeping that about me and not making it about my kids?

How easy is it for me to embrace all of the bits of my kids that they have chosen for themselves?

I may not be the best at encouraging my kids to dig up bugs and sew their own baby clothes, but I ROCK at embracing my kids for who they chose for themselves to be.

It is an honor to witness them, to see their journey unfold.

And that is about when I kick back and am able to see my kids again, and our life in all it's magnificence.

And then the funniest thing happens. I find myself outside digging in the dirt, because I realized that was something I was wanting to do.

And then, my kids look away from Netflix and come join me.

And I can appreciate it like a violin on their bandwagon, because it was all about them.

Such a funny little circle radical acceptance is. I can't change anything until I accept it, and once I accept it, it doesn't become about changing anymore, and yet it changes.

This is one of the common processes I experience in our free life.

It's a big piece of our gypsy lifestyle.

And I love sharing our gypsy life with you ♥

p.s. - If you find yourself caught in a piece of that process, please feel free to contact me. I would love to help you loosen up your mama mojo a bit and experience the free flow life ♥

gypsy schooling

Mmmm, hello, Love ♥

I wanted to sit down and circle with you on our experience with "schooling".

What we do now has had many incarnations and inluences. Homeschooling, unschooling, radical unschooling, roadschooling, world schooling.

Each of those pieces is part of our whole journey, and I certainly invite you to explore them in more depth, if you feel called toward them.

I want to share with you how they impact us today.

Homeschooling was our first adventure out of the public school system. I did hardcore research for 6 months on how to create my own curriculum, centered around my values at the time of frugal living, environmentalism, family connection, community, and interest-based organized learning. I also learned how to translate our living neatly into subject categories and see all the delicious overlap.

Still to this day, I organize my insides using the information I learned in my homeschooling research. It brings me peace to see what they are doing through a lens that leaves me feeling like a fulfilled home-maker.

Unschooling is a trust journey unfolding. It is child-led learning. It is parent supported (not parent driven). It is absolutely a journey, filled with learning about learning, practicing, self-doubt, reflection, pace, learning curves - the whole shebang.

Unschooling has been a huge piece of our learning foundation for almost 5 years.

Radical Unschooling emphasizes whole life learning, rather than just academics. To me, RU is about how far-reaching and how deeply we can dig to embody a self-guided learning trusting lifestyle. We are absolutely radical in our unschooling. My world revolves around trusting my kids and allowing our processes.

Mostly, I think what we got from this was to trust my kids in every area of their being, and trying to not make it about me, but allow them to be free to be them.

Roadschooling is whatever-style-of-"schooling"-floats-one's-boat on the road. Homeschoolers who live on the road, roadschool. Unschoolers who live on the road, roadschool.

For us, living on the road has opened up unique opportunities for living and learning that have become embedded in our lifestyle.

World Schooling, to me, is expanding to understand we have the whole world as our curriculum, and also to be aware about including the whole world in our learning. It also means travel to other countries and immersion into cultures, traditions, and lifestyles that grow our understanding of people and ourselves.

I can already feel us expanding to include the whole world in our scope, and I look forward to international travel.

Gypsy schooling is about being where we are. And honoring where we are in our journey.

It's about making a whole day about exploring a beach or a hiking trail or a new library or a park.

It's about meeting new people in new ways and learning how to find and give value in those interactions.

Gypsy schooling often looks like driving down the road and seeing a sign or a viewing point that feels right to investigate, and pulling over to do it.

It means moving at my kids' pace. Not rushing them along. Allowing them to be ready to leave when we start preparing to.

It means iphones and Netflix whenever the kids want.

It often means a lot of Mindcraft, Legos, action figures, and Cartoon Network for Noble.

And My Little Pony and babies for Jaja.

Kass spends most of her time learning about love, relationships, self, music, and entrepreneurship recently.

It means lots of parks and lots of library days and lots of community events, because we are living in the midst of it.

It means that the bulk of my kids learning revolves around living.
How to interact with people of all ages and all journeys.
How to tell time based on our van's clock.
How to tell number placement based on the "estimated miles remaining" guage.
How to read prices, add, and subtract through grocery shopping.
Economics when we talk about varying food prices in different states. Or gas prices.
And sometimes politics.
How to divide through sharing food together.
How to read based on finding favorite shows on Netflix, books, street signs.
State and US flags because we drive by them and yell them out everytime we see them.
State capitols as we drive through them.
Science based on the incredible variance of bugs and plants we see, and how we investigate our hypotheses.
We experience weather and seasons in different areas.

But the bulk of our learning is about ourselves and how to be a family.

We learn about our needs. We learn how to move our bodies in new ways as we explore our constantly changing world. We learn what we like and don't like. We learn how to learn more about something if we are interested.

We learn how to have feelings and how to express them in ways that do us justice while simultaneously honoring another.

We learn how to play together, how to explore together, how to flow together, how to help each other, how to grow together.

Gypsy schooling is about honoring each family member's free-flowing path, and finding ways to be together in that diversity.

It's about taking advantage of the moments when the iphone is dead and we have a nice car ride together, to talk about interesting stuff and about life and about ourselves.

It's about driving through lightning storms at night and listening to the little kids exclaim at every light show, without feeling the need to explain what lightening is. So they can enjoy the magic and the wonder... And maybe checking out lightening in slow motion on YouTube the next day and googling a bit about lightening, in a way that keeps their imagination and sense of wonder intact.

It's a balance between living and understanding. It's a dance between understanding and not knowing.

And the view along the way is breathtaking.

That is a little peek in our gypsy schooling lifestyle.

It varies so greatly, often depending on the child (my 14 year old is certainly learning differently than my 6 1/2 year old), or the experience (sometimes it is a pass-through, and sometimes it sticks and we want more and more).

Ideally, I would fill this page with pics from our many adventures, the varied landscapes we have viewed and wandered through, the people and experiences we have been honored to connect to.

The beautiful thing about living on the road is how big it all is. A big giant world of things to do and see and partake of.

New. Similar. Both important.

We go with the flow and trust that there is always plenty on the living and learning buffet :)

All my love,

How to Live More Intentionally e-course

Hey, Love! ♥

I am on my way out the door to celebrate the birth days of some beautiful friends.

But I wanted to come share my newest mini e-workbook with you first. It's an e-course that takes "a week and beyond".

It's an incredible tool for integrating our values into our deepest being and into our lives.

And, like all my life work, I am opened up for donation. So, please come check it out if you feel called toward it and give based on your own value of it in your life ♥

 



the next unfolding

Hello, Beloved ♥

You know me.

You will not be surprised that I changed my site's name again. BUT you will probably oooooh and ahhhhh with me over my new name: Gypsy Om.

Look at this gorgeous header...

We are following our om. And we are so excited to share the details with you.

I had some deep healing to do yesterday, and today was all about clarity. Thank you, New Moon ♥

I am feeling so incredibly blessed to be on this journey. I knew this road-life was going to sink me deeper into my knowing and expand me in ways I knew I was destined for. The road life is for me ♥

So, I am very excited to be hitting the road again on Monday. The open road has been beckoning me. I can't wait to kiss it!

And during my travels, I plan to gather beloveds along the way and speak at circles in the park about our gypsy om life, for donation. I have other ideas for gatherings and circles along the way, too. Bliss-shops.

When I follow my bliss, it all just unfolds like magic before me.

If you want to be made aware of where we are and where we are heading, you can stay in touch on Facebook.

I imported my travel blog with this one. Again, this is my one-stop-shop. Feel free to look back on the blog posts for July and August, if you want to see how it unfolded for us.

I plan to keep this blog space updated on our travels again.

I feel like we are starting fresh again. Over 2 years ago, when we ditched our house and moved in our RV and planned to hit the road, I had visions of smooth sailing and blogging from campground picnic tables.

It didn't happen. Well, last spring it kind of happened.

This time will be different. I see it so clearly.

A travel blog, a spiritual blog, a soulful blog. Spaces to connect with SO many while on the road ♥

I'm excited to open up and receive the abundance that the road life generates for me. Especially, the kinds of abundance that is unexpected and breath-taking ♥

A couple other things are unfolding, too. I already told you about the 5th wheel. I'm so excited that we will be finally manifesting a hOMe on wheels, somewhere to grow and spread out.

The other part is that I am going to collect free-hearted souls along my travels and add them to my gypsy tribe. I was made to be a gypsy, and I was made for a tribe, and I am SO ready to manifest this.

Bring it.