Thursday, December 10, 2009

Advice and Traditions

This comes via my mom via Maya Angelou.......because I am finding the holidays a tad overwhelming.....

Look heavenward and speak the word aloud.    Peace.
We look at each other, then into ourselves, and we
say without shyness or apology or hesitation:

Peace, My Brother
Peace, My Sister
Peace, My Soul

  M. Angelou

And then today while flying back to the cities I read a Lorna Landvik's 'Tis The Season . (seriously, read the whole thing in a 3 hour flight).   A quick easy read, but enjoyable.  Lorna is from Minnesota and I read her books when I am in the mood for something that is entertaining but light.

But near the very end of the story, I loved the idea they did for a new Christmas tradition.   Everyone in the room writes their name on a piece of paper.  Then everyone in the room draws a name from the hat.  For the name you draw, you must write them a fortune that you hope will come true for them before the next Christmas.  Then everyone folds the fortunes up and puts them in the hat and people find their name.  Then everyone reads their fortune out loud and they have to guess who wrote it for them.

Tuesday, December 1, 2009

Good People

Very rarely, but so brilliantly, sort of like seeing a double rainbow.....do serendipitous things occur.  And one of those nights was last week, Thanksgiving Eve.  We were headed in to town to check out the deals out there on King-sized mattresses and beds(we have recently been visited-often--by two burrowing raccoons) and thought we would hit Tiger Sushi because of a giftcard we had.

First of all, KUDOS to Tiger Sushi.  The place is beautiful and the food excellent...but the one thing we were so impressed with is how excellent their staff was.  We walk in, they immediately notice the two hyper kids, so they walk us to the table and within seconds they bring us kid-sized waters and (Lightbulb goes off)...a portable DVD player with Curious George playing.  Now, I said I would never be one of those parents that plopped her kids in front of the TV in order to appease them...but I lied and have done this on occasion.  The one nice thing about it at a restaurant is that myself and the hubby can sort of pretend to be on a date for 5 minutes while the kids watched the movie.

As a side note:  Tiger Sushi has by far the best miso soup I have ever had.  They had these little pieces of broccolini in it and the tofu pieces were big.  The pieces were so big that we used this as our first chopstick teaching lesson and the kids knocked it out of the park. 

But the next part of my story..brings me to the title, Good People.  So this very beautiful couple, with equally beautiful children sit down next to us.  As is the case with people with other kids, you start chatting about kids and life and whatever.  And before long, this kind family was feeding our kids their dessert.  (how nice is that?  How mean am I that didn't even buy my kids dessert?:)  And by the end of the evening our kids were running around the restaurant and our kids are hugging each other goodbye...no joke. But seriously, when was the last time that out of the complete blue, you meet such kind and generous people?

Well, come to find out, the mom, is the owner of livesavvy headbands.  So that night, after having such a great time with this family, I hopped on the ole' internet to check out the headbands.  As many of you have witnessed, I am not adept at "DOING" my hair.  I mean really, I don't even know how to use a round brush.  I only recently started flatironing and that is only for special occasions.  And so when I saw these wickedly cool headbands I had to order one.  BUT...to top it off, not only is she a super kind person, 10% of the proceeds got to the Tubman Family Alliance that works to end violence in the home and the designs are sewn by the women at the Regina Project..a vocational training program for refugee women.  This is the double-whammy of gifts...you get something uber-fabulous and you give so much...which is how most of life should be.  I quickly pen a note to this family, thanking them for being so kind (I have learned not to just sit back and let moments pass by...recognize it, enjoy it and be thankful...because again, there are no coincidences.)

So today, after what was kind of a long, crappy today, I get this sweet package in a recyclable mailer with a classy label.  So right away my spirits are lifted....but not only is the one headband in there that I ordered, but two others that she kindly gave me to try out.  So, despite my total hate of pictures of myself, I am so excited to show you the livesavvy headbands that were gifted to me.


How lucky am I??  Thanks Livesavvy....Peace.