Friday, December 28, 2012

End of December

It seems I am down to this once a month posting.
That is not really my intension or my favorite thing to be doing but...I wish I was posting more frequently but....
I have to say my life has been so action packed with following through with my intensions and living my life as fully as I have in these moments of being present to myself and my family during these holi-days.

During this past month we repeated many rituals joyfully this December...

We beefed up last years's advent calendar and had fun with those activities inserted in each day (with chocolate).



Advent calendar 2012

We practiced a lot of art-making activities to give as gifts to ourselves, our home and share with others.

We celebrated my birthday 2 weeks before Christmas.

We sang, decorated, baked, cooked, stored, wrapped, read stories, hung pictures and participated in community events and celebrations-
Events like cooking night at school, participating in a Solstice ritual, various holiday parties with friends, visit to Santa, viewing holiday windows and the Rockettes at Radio City Music Hall.

Some rituals and events were shared with sadness and and deep feelings of remorse-
the 11 year memorial of my dear mothers' death, still hard to move through these days without her
and of course the tragic masacre in Sandy Hook,  so shocking and touching our hearts in more ways than one. We all held each other tighter through our tears.

And we started a new ritual - a (homemade) elf "on a shelf". We jumped on that bandwagon when 2 friends at school talked about being visited by their elf. I looked up ordering one and and just couldn't bring myself to spend $39 on a little elf doll. So I made one with what I had at home. He looks a little bug-eyed and homemade but my son grew to love him especially because I found a companion horse for him that the elf would take with him each night to the north pole, to talk to Santa, and would return with him each morning.

Now it is time to make a list of all the things we did and shared in the whole year of 2012. The accomplishments, the gifts we were given, the wonderful things we shared and the promises we kept. And to celebrate and honor and be grateful for all of those things. Then carry those things into our intensions and wishes for the coming year, to plant those seeds of abundance and love and let them go out to grow through 2013. Thank you all- my family, my friends, my fellow humans- thank you for your beautiful gifts of love.