Is there such a thing as bloggers block?

Is there a such thing as bloggers block? I've never had a problem writing, but for some reason the last couple weeks I have not been able to write. I've started a couple blogs and gotten half way through, and though, "this is stupid", so I deleted them. I think my thoughts are so scattered that I can't seem to arrange them into words and instead it turns into a jumbled mess... this is already a jumbled mess, but I'm still going. I think I'll change the subject.

I can't believe it's almost Christmas. I can't believe my son is almost one year old. He is running around the house, talking to me, and I am left wondering what happened to the sweet little baby I held in my arms just a few months back. Not that he isn't sweet now.... when he isn't running around he is giving me hugs and kisses with his arms wrapped around my neck. I love hugs from him. Tomorrow is Christmas Eve and we will go to Ryan's parents house to celebrate, with lots of food and fun gifts for the kids. This year we opted to go all out for the kids instead of buying big gifts for us adults. We already have everything we need, and it's more fun to see the little ones playing with their new toys anyway. Christmas day we will go to my parents house to celebrate. Once again, delicious food and lots of spoiling for Lucas. He already got to peek at one of his gifts... a table and chair set just his size!

I feel so blessed to be surrounded by wonderful family and friends again this Christmas, and so happy to be able to share it with Lucas this time.

Thanksgiving Blessings

Thanksgiving this year was wonderful, and it made me remember everything I have to be thankful for. However, this year was unlike any Thanksgiving before.

As a kid I remember going to my grandma's house for thanksgiving, with my aunt, uncle, and cousins visiting from the bay area. We would watch "Home Alone" over and over again, walk to the park up the street to play, and enjoy a delicious meal. My favorite part was always the black olives.... I'd load them up on all ten fingers and eat them one at a time. My grandma always had an extra olive dish just for me.

The last few years as myself, my brother, and cousins grew older, we celebrated at my parents house with whoever was available to come. We transitioned to gluten free thanksgivings, as all other meals had become. We had fun with new recipes for stuffings and pies, and always had the delicious turkey and fun family time.

Then I married Ryan, and we started having 2 thanksgivings each year, one at each of our parents house. We spent half the day at one house eating a full turkey day meal, and then moved on to the next house to eat yet another full turkey day meal. We would leave stuffed, but happy to have had the time with our families.

Next came Lucas, and this year, a couple months before Thanksgiving I started thinking... I wanted Lucas to have a big Thanksgiving with everyone he loves. Just as I remember big happy family thanksgivings as a kid, I want to give him memories like that as well. So Ryan and I decided to join our families for a big Thanksgiving! Needless to say, it was a blast! We had so much fun with everyone together. Boys watching football, girls in the kitchen, kids playing in the living room with grandparents on their tails, music coming from down the hall once the instruments had been broken out, and most of all, lots of smiles, hugs, laughter, and good food.

I'm proud to say we pulled it off, with lots of help from our parents of course. I'm not embarrassed to admit I was freaking out about the

turkey (my first time cooking one) when my mom hadn't arrived when she said she would... Anyway, it was a wonderful experience, and I hope we can do it again in the future.

Here are some fun pictures...

The Jaeger family... (clockwise from the left) Ryan, Bill, Alan, Kylan, Kelly (and Alek), Patti, Sylvia, Me, and Lucas

The Malmin/Weber family... (clockwise from top left)... Ryan, Dave, Andy, Kevin, Brian, Jenny, Elle, Judith, Barbara with Lucas, Suzanne, Matt, and Sam lower center.

No Sew Tie Blanket

I am so proud of the blankets I made today! One for Lucas for his birthday, and one for soon to be baby Alek, Luke's cousin... These were so easy and fun! The only annoying thing was that Joan Fabrics sale signs were misleading, so I ended up spending a lot more than I planned.... lesson learned.

Here are the instructions for anyone interested...

You will need 2 yards of fleece material each for the front and back of the blanket.
You can choose two solids, or mix it up with one solid and one print.
Lay your material on top of each other making sure it is lined up perfectly, you may even use pins to secure it but pin the material away from the edges at least 4 inches.
Once your material is lined up cut out a 4x4 inch square from all four corners of the fleece material.
Now you will begin cutting around the edge of the material. Use your thumb as a guide and cut lines the width of your thumb and then up 3 inches-4 inches. Make sure the cuts are even around the entire edge.
Once this is done begin Knotting the material. On the corners do not, knot the material too tightly. You will be tying the material from the front to the piece in the back. This will create a neat, knotted fray around the entire blanket. If you use a buddy it will take you about 30 minutes to do one blanket .
If you used pins to secure the material together, remove them. When you are done you can roll this up and it looks really neat with the different colors. You can even wrap with a bow or leftover material.

May you be happy and peaceful

Something Nancy taught me on Thursday, and I love it so much it is going to be with me every day. I hope I got the words right...

May you be happy and peaceful

May you be healthy and strong

May you be safe from harm

May you move through the world with ease.

May I be happy and peaceful

May I be healthy and strong

May I be safe from harm

May I move through the world with ease.

Repeat this to yourself daily, in the car, in the shower, before you go to sleep, any time you need to calm yourself and bring yourself to a place of peace. Feel your breath flowing in and out of your body as you say these words. Feel how alive you are. Find yourself in awe of your body and and how beautiful it is, how beautiful life is.

Letter to Lucas

Lucas,

I want to tell you what I love about you! I love your spirit, your beautiful personality, that little spark in your eye that seems so mischevious. I love that devilish smile you flash at me just before you tear across the room for your favorite toy. I love your deep belly laugh that radiates so much pure, utter, happieness. I love to watch you explore new things, you are amazed and infatuated by life and everything around you. I see joy on your face when you spot our dog or cat, or any animal for that matter. I know you are pure and good in your heart. I love how you can make me smile on the worst day, just by looking in my eyes. You make me laugh when you stare right at my face and then grab my glasses off before I have the chance to stop you. You are beautiful and perfect and I am so proud to be your mom. Your personality is amazing to me. You are curious, strong willed, determined, happy, shy, and you wear your heart on your sleeve. You are uninhibited. You have a killer smile, you are going to be a handsome man someday, I can tell already. Your hair makes me laugh too! It is so curly and long and out of control. It is free spirited, just like you. You have such a happy personality and I never want that to change. I love you, I love you, I love you.

I want to tell you some things... give you some motherly advice. First of all, this may sound cliched, but try as hard as you can to always be yourself. Don't be shy to show people who you really are. Stand up for your opinions and your own thoughts because they are not wrong. They are what make you, you. Second, do not judge other people. You will make the best friends, meet the most interesting people, and learn so much if you are open and non judgemental in your relationships. I have so many hopes for you... that you find what you love to do, that you meet someone wonderful and fall in love, that you have your own beautiful children someday, that you have every opportunity to see and experience the world. I also hope that you learn to see the beauty in everything - in small and simple things. I hope that you know faith, and that you find a spirituality that you are comfortable with. I hope that you can take what your dad and I teach you and take it in your own heart, and grow with it for a lifetme. I hope that you know how much we love you, and always will love you no matter what you choose to do or who you choose to be.

I want to tell you how much you mean to me Lucas. You have changed my life. I am so proud to be your mom. I don't know what I used to do with my life before you came into it. You have shown me what really matters in this world. Happiness is family, love, and the experences we share together. It is not material, not found in money or posessions, status or popularity. It is in being true, being me, being you. I want nothing but the best for you... the best life, the best opportunities, the best experiences, and I will do everything in my power to give you everything you deserve. I can't wait for the years of experiences with you Lucas.

Love and hugs,
Mom

Mother’s Day Meaning

My mom gave me a gift years ago, a little wall hook that said, “You’ll never know how much your mother loves you”. It has moved with me from my first apartment, to all the homes I’ve had with Ryan. It was always special to me, but of course I didn’t fully understand what it meant, or what it must have meant to her. Today, it has a different meaning to me, and I’m sure I’ve just barely scratched the surface of beginning to understand and feel a mother’s love.
When Lucas was born, I loved him immediately, the first cry, the first time I looked in his eyes, I couldn’t believe what I was seeing, hearing, and feeling. But every day that love has grown stronger and stronger and so many times I feel like I can’t even describe with words how much I love him. Who can understand this, other than another mother? My mom can, and this year, I have a new, different appreciation for my mom, a new understanding of what we are celebrating on mother’s day, and a deeper feeling of love than I’ve ever felt in my life. I think I may put that little sign in Luke’s room someday, and hope that he will come close to knowing how beautiful he is to me, how he gave new meaning to my life, and how much I have and will always love him.

Religion and Spirituality - May 11, 2008

A couple of days ago my grandpa, the minister said to me. "I'm going to tell you something Suzi, and I've never told this to anyone before. I really believe you let God run your life". And I thought to myself, "yes, that is what I want, and that is what I do try to do." I have always believed that the right thing will come, that God has a plan for me and Ryan and that if we have open minds and open hearts, everything will work out the way it is supposed to. I have a lot of faith that we are making the right choices. We have been very blessed in our lives so far. We have had wonderful opportunities and great experiences together. We may not always be making the most responsible choices or the choices that other people think we should make, but we are following our hearts, and the plan that God has put together for us. We are very lucky, and very fortunate to have had all the opportunities we have had. I really believe that if we continue to live our life the way we do, and to enjoy ourselves as much as possible and wait for the right things to come our way, we will lead very happy and inspiring lives, and teach Lucas and any siblings those same values.

My faith has always been strong, but the way I believe and the way I show my faith has really changed over my lifetime. When I was a little girl I prayed to Jesus every night to keep my family safe and keep me healthy. I was afraid to do anything that would be a sin, for fear that something bad would happen to me. I was afraid to swear or lie or cheat or do anything wrong. As I grew older I continued those fears, and added to my prayers every night a plea to God to protect me from the things that I was afraid of. I feared that if I did anything wrong or said anything wrong I would be subjected to those fears, and tortured with them. I continued to think that faith was going to Church regularly and believing in God and Jesus. In middle school and high school I started hearing people talk about "having a relationship with God". I didn't know how to do that. I said my prayers. I went to Church. I participated in youth group. But i did not understand this relationship that I was supposed to have. I wondered if I was really safe from Hell since I didn't really feel I had this relationship. In high school I went to Mexico to build houses for the poor. I did this twice and those experiences brought me closer to God and the deepest into Christianity and the Church than I had every been before. I started to feel like I had this relationship, or at least a better understanding of what God wanted me to do, and be like. But I still held on to the fears I had had as a child. I started going to Church more regularly on Sundays, and continued to go to youth group and be involved with the Church. Once I got to College things slowed down a bit. I was shocked into this new life on my own. I was supposed to be an adult and was out of my comfort zone. i was scared and I was sick. I went to a few Campus Crusade for Christ meetings and felt the familiar good feelings I had felt in my hometown youth group. But something stopped me from going regularly. I was having such a hard time away from home, and I didn't have any friends. I was too quiet to try and make new friends in the group. So I didn't keep going and I ended up up leaving the university after a quarter beause I was sick. I felt like I had failed at being an adult, at being on my own. From this point I entered into the hardest period of my life. I struggled with my health, with my relationship with my parents, with my own identity, and with my life in general. I went through many medical diagnoses from hypoglycemia to mononucleosis, none of which turned out to be correct. I was put on antianxiety meds and antidepressants, harnessing any last bit of my true self. It was a fight, a struggle, but I finally got through it, discovering my true condition, celiac disease, and started a path to healing. I tried during this period to go back to Chuch, but never quite suceeded. It wasnt fitting with my lifestyle, and something still felt like it was missing.

In the back of my head, as a child, there was always something wrong with what I was being taught. We were told in Church that "God" was the only real God, and that Christianity was the only real and true and right religion. That never made sense to me. Why, then, were there so many religions in the world? Why did so many people believe in so many different forms of God? How could the God I was taught about, the one who loves every person in the world like they are his own child, send all these people to hell because they believe the wrong thing? The God I believed in just couldn't do that. So I always had some question in the back of my head about religion. I still believed in God, and followed what I was taught, but there was this doubt in the back of my mind. I felt like that doubt was bad, like I would be punished for it, like it was a sin, so I tried to push it away.

Once I had resolved my health problems, gone back to school, made new friends, and started my relationship with Ryan, I went through a period where I was preoccupied, and sort of shut religious activities out of my life for awhile. I stopped going to church, and hardly prayed anymore. I still believed, but was so confused that I didn't know what I believed, so I just didn't think about it much. I went through a period of about 5 years of dating, traveling, going to school, working, looking for who I was and what I wanted out of life. I graduated from college, got a real job, and got married. At this point is where I started thinking about religion again. But this time, it had a new name - spirituality.

Being spiritual made more sense to me. I felt as though I'd always been a spiritual person. Rather than believing there was only one way to believe, this opened up my eyes and made the world make more sense. I new my answers were hiding somewhere in the definition of spirituality. I bought an audio recording of Dr Wayne Dyer speaking on his book, "There is a spiritual solution to every problem", and as I listened to it, I was amazed. It made sense of every question, every doubt, every bit of confusion I'd ever had about my religion, and I realized I had been believing the wrong thing for 25 years. I was believing in a story book Jesus, a fairy tale religion. I was now able to admit to myself, without feeling guilty, like I was sinning, that I could believe what I feel in my heart.

So, where am I now? I am a student of God, a student of spirituality. I listen to the teachings of Jesus, of Buddha, of any spiritual leaders that have touched humanity, and I take what makes sense to me. I believe in heaven and hell in a whole different way than I did as a child. I know in my heart that if I am a good person, that nourishes my spiritual self, and gives to humanity, makes a difference in the lives of others, and is loving, open, and true to myself, that I will be in this world, in a good place, for a very long time. i won't be in this body forever, but I will always be me. And when I do leave this body, I will be capable of experiencing and seeing, and loving, and being more than I ever could while walking on earth. I know I will be with those who love me, and I will be there for those that I love as well.

I am finally at peace with my beliefs. I no longer feel guilty for not going to church every sunday. I don't think it's wrong to be inspired by the teachings of Buddah. I want to teach my son about the good inside people, and the good of God in this world. I want him to know God not as a fairy tale, and not in fear, but in love and all the beauty that can come from it.