JustMeAgain

Come in! Come in!

Come in! Come in!, originally uploaded by Maria Hammon.

"If you are a dreamer, come in

If you are a dreamer, a wisher, a liar,

a Hope-er, a Pray-er, a Magic Bean buyer,

If you're a pretender, come sit by my fire

For we have some flax-golden tales to spin

Come in! Come in!"

~ Shel Silverstein

Our plans are nothing compared to what the world so willingly gives us.

The following text is from the DailyGood.org. I found it very inspiring so I thought I'd share it here:

Very little about the emerging nature of life supports who we have tried to be. Life invites us to play along, discovering as we go. Life wants to work with us in surprising ways. We could make our lives so much more interesting, and develop so many new capacities, if we sought to work with the unknowns of emergence, rather than try and plan surprise out of our lives.

What do we do with surprise? What do we do with a world which cannot be known until it is in the process of discovering itself? It requires constant awareness, being present, being vigilant for the newly visible. We need to notice things we weren't looking for, things we didn't know would be important, influence we hadn't thought of, behaviors we couldn't predict.

An emergent world invites us to use our most human of all capacites, our consciousness. It asks us to be alert in the moment for what is unfolding. What is happening at this moment? What can we do because of what we just learned?

An emergent world welcomes us in as conscious participants and surprises us with discovery. "To recognize that everything is surprising is the first step toward recognizing that everything is a gift," says Steindl-Rast.

Our plans are nothing compared to what the world so willingly gives us.

~Margaret Wheatley

Legacy of love

 

As promised, here is a sneak peek at some of the pictures from last Saturday. 

Flickr inspiration

 

* This photo includes pictures not taken by me.  Click on the link to see it in flickr with the individual links to the artists and photographers who took them.  They are all pictures that have been downloaded by members of the flickr group called Creative Flowers.

Thank you everyone!  I really appreciate all of your posts with questions and ideas for future entries on the blog!  I am so excited to create responses to everyone on individual posts later in the week.  I'll start today with Liz' request to share a link salad to all of the Flickr groups that I have started. This morning I created a couple of mosaics using the mosaic maker by bighugelabs with a hand full of favorite pictures from members of the first two groups that I started on flickr a few years ago.  Creative Words and Creative Flowers.  Creative Flowers has 401 members today with a total of 4,117 pictures, and counting, that are being downloaded by its members every day!  Creative Words has a total of 277 members with 2771 pictures at this time.  It is always very inspiring to see the work by the extremely enthusiastic Flickr community!  I can always find inspiration whenever I browse through the photostreams of the people in Flickr.

I am a group administrator to a total of six groups, but three of them were actually started by other members.  Here is a list of links to all the groups where I act as an admin.

* Creative Words.  This is a group all about WORDS, quotes, lyrics, poems or scripture that are inspiring.  I ask that the members match these words with their favorite photos. Either directly on the photo using Photoshop or any other similar software; or using wisdom words as the title, or in the description.

* Creative Flowers.  As the title implies it, this is all about FLOWERS.  Every shape, form or size are welcome! 

* Quotes Only. One more group about quotes!  Can you tell I love collecting quotes?

* The Unbussed Table (this group was started by Linda Woods and Karen Dinino, but they kindly invited me to be an admin with them.)  In this group, Linda and Karen are inspiring everyone to share their table stories through pictures.  And if you are anything like me, you cannot eat a meal without taking a picture first! :D

* Cups for Creativity (this group was started by Marissa, but she invited me to work on this group with her a while ago.)  This group was intended to show case pictures with cups!  When Marissa started this group, she told me that she loved collecting cups and it would be a good idea to start a group all about cups.  I immediately agreed with her, specially considering that a huge percentage of my photos include a cup or two.  Have you seen my Starbucks addiction set?  That explains a little, don't you think?

* Sunday Bruch (this is also a group that was started by another friendly flickr member who invited to be an admin with her.)

If you already are a Flickr member, and haven't joined us in these groups yet, you are INVITED to be a part of each and everyone of these groups!  If you are not a Flickr member yet, let's get you started, shall we?

 

* This photo includes pictures not taken by me.  Click on the link tosee it in flickr with the individual links to the artists and photographers who took them.  They are all pictures that have been downloaded by members of the flickr group called Creative Words.

Happy Tuesday!

 

Love it all.

“How do we nurture the soul? By revering our own life. By treating it as supremely important. By reaching for the best within ourselves. By learning to love it all, not only the joys and the victories, but also the pain and the struggles.”

-- Nathaniel Branden 

Life is like a roller coaster!

Some of these pictures were part of the hundreds I took during my daughter's last school field trip in the fifth grade last week, on Monday.  You can see a few more here.  And some of the pictures in this post were part of her last day of elementary school, on Friday.  The last few shots were from Father's Day, yesterday.

What an amazing adventure this past week has been! I felt like the days melted together into one big blob with a multitude of things to do and places to go and work to keep up with -and still much of it has rolled over to this week! But what can you do? Just roll with it.

Friday, during the graduation ceremony, I couldn't help it to cry a bit. My daughter will be in middle school next year!  How fast time has gone. She's been in the same school since Kindergarten. She's had a group of AMAZING teachers. Every single one of them were truly phenomenal educators whose terrific legacies will remain in our hearts FOREVER. Sabrina wrote each of them a small little letter (two of them already retired and will get theirs in the mail this week) to say thank you in her own words. I love that she is so much like me in the way she communicates. She truly enjoys writing!

She has also had wonderful friendships...so sweet to watch these girls grow up together!  At some level, some of her little friends feel like an extended family. I love that my daughter has had the chance of experiencing her entire elementary school in the same place. When I was growing up, my father's work caused us to move quite often and I attended five different elementary schools! Talk about feeling like the new kid EVERY year!  This is why it was so important to me that my daughter could have a completely different experience than mine.

When I was growing up, fifth grade was a year filled with memories of every kind. In fact, it was a very complicated year for me. It was a year full of new adventures and fun stuff, yes, but also a year in which I had some of the biggest challenges of my life; like having my baby brother be diagnosed with a brain tumor. He passed away a year later.  And I remember everything about those days. The good byes. The pain. The loss. The fears and the sadness...but I also clearly remember the support from those close to us, the LOVE and affection from my parents and sisters, the strength I got from my faith (that's probably when I first began to truly understand the love of God in my life), the sweetness of summer days and the happiness of knowing in my heart that my brother would live in my heart forever, and that one day we would meet again when my time comes. Life is a lot like a roller coaster. Sometimes you are high up there and other times you are down. And that's all part of the plan. In order to enjoy the ride, there MUST be a high point and a low point. And only when you let go, you can truly enjoy the experience. And if you are like me, and are afraid of the big roller coasters, just close your eyes, breathe deep, and PRAY!  Believe me, it works!

   

Thankful.

Thankful for so many things and for everyone who makes the time to stop by this blog.

Blissfully thankful.   

I hope each and everyone of you will have a wonderful and blessed Thanksgiving holiday! 

Flowers and more flowers!

Every rose is an autograph from the hand of God on his world about us. 
He has inscribed his thoughts in these marvelous hieroglyphics which
sense and science have, these many thousand years,
been seeking to understand.
-    Theodore Parker

I was showing a friend how to use brushes and somehow I liked how this turned out...so I'm keeping this as a "fun" photo that I can later use for a card or something.  The flower photo this time was taken by my friend Beth Sullivan.

I have to add a link to Addrienne and Toya's blogs with today's entries.  They have phenomenal photos in their signature day "inspirational Wednesday." Check them out.

My life in flowers and quotes...

If you know me, even just a bit, you will know that I am in love with flowers, plants and trees...but specially with flowers. They truly, truly, truly speak to me. So I decided to start a little folder called my life in flowers where I'll add some of my flower flower shots. I have too many to add them all, so just a few will do for now.   I will keep adding more as time allows.

And I began a new blog for the sole purpose of sharing one simple quote a day. Hence its name. It's simple. So, whenever you need a good quote for a layout, or simply just for inspiration, stop by.  A link to that blog is added on the left side bar.  Or click here for the link.

Arturo

“Adults are always asking little kids what they want to be when they grow up because they're looking for ideas” -Paula Poundstone.

Still sharing some of my Mexico pictures. This is my nephew Arturo. When I last saw him in 2002 he was only a two-year old little boy. It's truly amazing how fast children grow! He was named after my brother Arturo who passed away at the age of 6 years old in 1982 (a cancerous brain tumor took his life). I was only 12 years old then, but I have so many vivid memories of him.

Seeing Arturo, my nephew, reminded me so much of my baby brother. His warm personality, his willingness to go with the flow, his sweet little voice...

My baby brother certainly left many wonderful memories that have been locked in my heart forever. Now, as a mother myself, I can only imagine how terribly devastating it must have been for my mother and father to go through such a terrible loss. Even though my brother has been gone for so many years, his memory lives in all of our hearts. And now, thanks to Arturo, many new memories are being formed. It's as if a little bit of him has been reborn.

But certainly, it is always sad to say goodbye to loved ones. Today is a memorial service for a good friend of mine who has sadly passed away during this passed week. Her name was Susan. We had many interactions at work for many years. Although we didn't work in the same office, we had to see each other often due to the type of work we each did. She was a hearing monitor for one of the offices were we handle a lot of our caseload. Today, I'm sending prayers for Susan's family, her children, her mom. I know Susan has gone to a better place where no pain can ever get to her. Cancer took her life too, like my baby brother's. She was always so positive and everyone who knew her always went away with a smile on their faces because she was that kind of person. The kind that can always bring the best of you. Susan, you will be missed. More than words can say.  But your sweet smile and your positive outlook in life will remain forever in our hearts.