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if I close my eyes and make a wish will fairies come and check off my to do list?

By on May 17, 2012 in help!, stuff we do, ☢ rants

because I could seriously use some fairies about now…

I thought while I was waiting for the fairies to show up I would come on here and tell you about my to do list. I promise that it will make your day at least 2% more interesting.

1. we are on a quest towards minimalism. it is freakishly harder to get there than I wish it was. as in, time consuming! I wanted to make a “30 days to” but I don’t want it to take that long!!! it is, however, sort of inevitable I think. the sleeping room probably has another day of optimization left. and meanwhile, we live in quite non-optimal surroundings… (we haven’t yet even started on the other 4 rooms)

2. I NEEEEEEEEEEEEED to organize, sort, delete, systemize all of our files, pictures, videos…………………………….. because we really can’t keep just buying another external hard drive every time we run out of room. and I’m battling all of my drives trying to be in the red zone right now. UUUUUUUUUUUGHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH

3. I need to track down whatever happened to the picture scanner we bought while in Costa Rica. it wasn’t here when we arrived. soooooo where is it? do YOU have it?!

4. we have various client projects to follow up on. nothing horribly urgent, thank goodness, but all there in my head adding weight. and oh yeah, have to set up two in-person meetings. those always take more time…!

5. we really need to finish our Kaleidoscope site makeover because the portfolio section which already needed to be updated lost all but one picture for each project in the transfer. #headache

6. we need to finish sorting out the details of our self-service sites for Kaleidoscope (Premium Webspots)

7. we need to keep working on our Beauty of One site because it’s currently too confusing and etc. etc. I need to go through all the work that Krista has started and refine it and put it up on the site.

7.a I have a TON of pictures/textures/etc. that need to be sorted and uploaded for stock photography, etc. hopefully develop a little side income there…

8. I need to order new sets of BlankCanvas cards. but I hate ordering, so maybe I could bribe Krista into doing that for me… hmmm.

9. I need to order t-shirts.

10. I need to know where the money is going to come from for above said ordering.

11. speaking of money, we ended up having to get an extension for our taxes because things were just too crazy right around the time that we had procrastinated up until and so yeah, we still have to do those. #timesimnotsureifdeathwouldntbeabetteroption

12. I need to update our Beauty of One social media

13. I need to do at least 10 things for the project related to the trip we are hoping to go on this summer. I need to blog about that also. because I hate when people are vague as much as you probably do.

14. I need to make a very last minute flyer for our church’s youth pastor woohoo! did that in a half an hour

15. I need to make more IRLO Mashup updates and schedule at least 3 more introduction posts = time consuming.

16. I need to figure out what we are having for supper because we need to go grocery shopping. I don’t remotely want to go anywhere today.

17. there is yard work that is being completely ignored. because we can only do so much.

18. there are about 15 things on my church secretary to do list.

19. I want to make a bunch of updates on THIS site.

20. I really want to be the kind of friend who celebrates people on their birthday and checks in with people during the week and all of that. but I can’t right now and it kills me! I recently missed even wishing my friend, Althea, a happy birthday, and that makes me sad. it wasn’t that I didn’t think of her around her birthday, it was just that things happened.

21. obviously there are lots of things we should be doing with our kids. Maeve needs to learn to read better. you know, simple, basic things that are kind of important for success in life.

well. that is a small picture of why I am feeling stressed out today. there are easily 10 more things that I want to do and lots of ways the above things could be broken down into lots of little things. everything just takes so. much. longer. thank it should take!

YES we want to simplify our lives, but getting to the simple is an annoyingly long process! and of course there’s always that whole money factor in there. can’t forget that.

having a huge to do list is just rather paralyzing. I regularly pray that if the work we are doing is not in line with what God has for us that he would show us and direct us in the right way. I feel like he is doing that, but it is scary and we have no idea what it ultimately looks like, so we just keep bumbling along one day at a time. sometimes I think he lets us get pushed to the breaking point so that we will be ready for the next thing that he has for us. we’re there, God, we’re there!

I just want to do this again!

Comments { 5 }

looking ridiculous is an important component of staying young

By on May 10, 2012 in friends, HA! ☺, pose like a teenage girl, stuff we do, tips & tidbits, traveling

another part of my “staying young theory”, along with the spontaneity thing, is to make a practice of doing silly things just for fun.

I’ll hang out with almost anyone, but if you’ll take funny pictures with me then you definitely score major points. conversely, if you don’t have the time of day for funny pictures, I will likely find you a little stuffy :) but if I can make fun of how stuffy you are then you’ll probably gain back a point.

see how this works yet?

ok, so in honor of turning 30 the other day last year I got Rhonda to take some pictures with me in honor of teenage girls everywhere. we intended to take more, but we ended up not having much time. I actually discovered later that I forgot to post one of them, but I can’t find it at the moment so I’ll have to get it up at some later date.

in any case, the idea is to try to get inside the mind of a teenage girl for these sorts of pictures, but sometimes our maturity just shines through…

ronald1ronaldkissymannequins

I was actually channeling my inner mannequin for this one. how creepy are these?!

enchanted

and obviously these are our fairy faces.

cupcakes

and finally, we got our men to join us. Mr D. said “I’m eating my cupcake”

do YOU take funny pictures? I’d obviously like to laugh at you, so send me a link!

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questioning our sanity at 1:30am

By on May 8, 2012 in friends, HA! ☺, Intentionally Inconvenient, Lifestyle, stuff we do, traveling

I’m not sure if we’ve ever really questioned our sanity too much based on the time of day we are doing something. it is usually other aspects of circumstances that are more problematic for us. last night it was a certain troublesome address and a very cantankerous GPS… let me give you a little background.

as we’ve gotten older and had kids we’ve made a conscious effort to stay flexible and spontaneous. when we’re at home our kids go to bed at 8:00, but we just have our little routines that work no matter where we are so they are used to being flexible. we take advantage of this for all sorts of spontaneous adventures, and sometimes we’re able to convince other people to join in :)

last year our friend, Jeff, was getting off of his bus driving shift at midnight so we decided to meet up with him and his wife, Rhonda, for a little midnight snack. our kids were a little confused when we got them out of bed at 11, but they enjoy adventure, so they were soon chipper. (I told them about how sometimes when we were getting ready for bed when I was a kid my dad would suddenly yell up the stairs “road trip!” and we would all pile in the car and go into town. I am pretty sure these trips were virtually always based on my dad’s wanting to rent a movie for him and my mom to watch, but I think we usually got ice cream cones or something on the way back – I didn’t tell our kids that part, though, lol)

yes, I do believe we were rather tired on the way home (we had certainly not gone to bed before we left or anything like that) but it is a fun memory to have, and beats a few extra hours of sleep on that day. [sidenote: don't you just love my little brown child's hands on my poor crazy-white ones? cute!]

so fast forward to now, and how those silly friends thought they had to up and MOVE 9 hours away… while we were in Costa Rica, no less. (well, they tried to wait for us, but plans fell through once or twice…)

in any case, on Sunday night we were talking and decided it was high time we skedaddled up to visit them, and why not just do it when we could help them with moving into a different house? so our intern, Krista (who happens to be Rhonda’s niece), sorted out her day job work shifts and not too many hours later we all embarked on a mission to surprise the socks off of our wayward friends.

on the way we guessed what they would look like/say if we got there late and had to wake them up for the surprise. we figured that Rhonda would look all squinty-eyed, smiley, and confused, while Jeff would say some version of “what are YOU guys doing here??? I’m sleeping!”

we should have originally arrived before 11:00pm, but wouldn’t you know that their address had to go and break the GPS? first it tried to take us to some Mexican restaurant in New York, which really, doesn’t sound like a bad plan. then it just generally went downhill from there. at one point it told us to turn into oncoming traffic on a one-way.

traveling tip for the wise: when your GPS tries to kill you, it’s time to use a regular map and the handy dandy brain God gave you.

too bad that our God-given brains function best in broad daylight and with our original eyesight as opposed to these crappy old people night vision type of eyes that have found themselves misplaced into our skulls.

the Michigan map people need to band together to sue themselves and those regular online maps. I would hope a judge would sentence them to all get on the same page. when one road/highway/street/avenue is called by more than 2 names, I submit that confusion abounds. we should be awarded a hefty sum for the hour and a half we lost bodinking around the flat lands.

the good news is that we DID finally make it, and we did end up waking Jeff & Rhonda out of their peaceful slumber, and they DID respond almost identically to our predictions. it’s fun to know and be known to that degree.

I am currently falling asleep like crazy while writing this post and have no idea how it is going to sound when I read it again in the morning. I only know that spontaneity and lack of mobile online access is like online suicide, and it’s been like 4 days since I’ve had decent access, and now my projects are backed up. I feel it is necessary I go to bed now before I say something that sounds like complete nonses (that is apparently how one types “nonsense” in one’s sleep, so I’m going to just leave that there to help you understand my situation, LOL, and why I’ll have to wait for another post to add in pictures/video from our trip)

I’ll hopefully be back on and getting caught up on all the things people are waiting on tomorrow,,,, (yeah, those commas are also from my sleeping brain straight to you. so not joking.) GOODNIGHT.

Comments { 7 }

party like you just got home from Costa Rica… (which happens to be a part of the “real world”)

By on April 15, 2012 in Costa Rica, fyi, IRLOMashup, Lifestyle, stuff we do, work, ★ dreams, ♬ music & art ✎

yeah, we got home late Thursday night, but we left again on Friday afternoon for a marriage retreat. so tonight I consider us to be home for real.

I can’t say it feels like much of a party, though.
(especially since it feels like I’m getting a cold?!)

that’s why I’m linking us up to the Ultimate Blog Party 2012!

there, now it feels a bit more festive in here.

seriously, though, we were just waiting for all the “welcome back to the real world” comments. (which thankfully we haven’t gotten too much yet at least) the thing is, last I checked, Costa Rica is not part of another planet – it’s right here on our world, Earth. additionally, it was Mr. D’s “real world” in every sense, all sarcasm aside, for the first 20 years of his life, which is still well over half of it :)

Costa Rica is a part of our real world, whether or not we live there all of the time. our kids have now joined Mr. D in dual citizenship status, which was obviously not without its quirks, but we’re really happy for them to have that, and I’m looking forward to becoming naturalized sometime in the future as well. we found out on this trip that we should apparently be able to count the 6 months that I’ve lived there so far towards the 2 years I need to have under my belt, so I think that is pretty cool!

anyway, if you’re here for the first time, or maybe have been here before but not made it to our “about” page, here’s a bit of a summary of why we blog:

we’re a passionately creative, multi-cultural family who is currently self-employed and location independent. we’re just sharing our crazy journey, and hope it encourages others along the way.

we really do believe that we are all made for adventure, and while that looks different in different lives, we know that God’s dreams and plans for us are often, if not always, much bigger than what we dream for ourselves. we are continuously amazed by his work in our lives.

part of our journey thus far includes our small business identity & graphic design business, which happens to currently be undergoing a bit of restructuring. our heart for Kaleidoscope International has always been to become a well-rounded resource and source of encouragement for small businesses and those looking to self-employment as a way to enable them to spend more time with their families, so we are working on developing that aspect of it more.

another business that we have just begun developing, though it has been in our hearts for many years, is called the Beauty of One. we believe that what we surround ourselves by has a big impact on us, and so we want to make it easy for people to surround themselves by what inspires and encourages them. we create custom inspirational art, as well as sell ready-made art, (all still in the beginning stages) and are building several fun sidelines such as BlankCanvas™ Cards. we cart around a blank canvas with us and use it in pictures when we come across interesting locations on our adventures. this adventure in Costa Rica is by far the most memorable so far!

the blank canvas has become to us a symbol of life, and we want to paint an adventure on it. this summer we hope to involve some of you in that adventure! we anticipate starting to roll out some of the details about that in the coming month, so stay tuned :)

meanwhile, if you’d like to be part of a fun get-to-know-you activity we’re doing that involves the BlankCanvas™ cards, check it out over here, I haven’t had much time to explain it in detail because of all our recent craziness, so there are still a few spots open!

we’d love to know more about your dreams/adventure, go ahead and introduce yourself!

Comments { 15 }

it was crazy and I almost died.

By on April 4, 2012 in Costa Rica, HA! ☺, help!, stuff we do, traveling

I’m referring to our latest adventure, which we actually went on sans children.
thank goodness!

most of the beginning I was thinking, there is NO way this is going to be worth it. 6 miles of crazy hills, much of which was the middle of the jungle – read, trails you could barely call blazed. the 3 times we actually stopped for a bit I felt refreshed and when we started out again I felt like it was no big deal.

that feeling was much too quickly replaced by “grrrrr, I don’t want to do this anymore!!!”

I can be kinda bratty sometimes, mainly in relation to intense physical exertion…

Mr. D was seriously my hero, though. he was sooooooooooo nice. he wanted me to not have to carry anything from the beginning, but there was no way I was going to be THAT much of a pansy! halfway through, though, the 3lb camera bag (I think it was more like 5lbs, but who takes a scale to the jungle) started feeling like 5 or maybe 10 pounds. Mr. D kept asking me if he could carry it (along with the backpack of water he was already carrying) and finally I gladly accepted his offer. he’s amazing.

there is really no way for me to accurately portray the difficulty of the hike, but when Eddy said “you carried a baby for 9 months, TWICE, you can do this!” and I replied “that was easier!”, well, you get the idea.

practically speaking, current you forgets how crappy the experience past you had was, and I already think, what?! it wasn’t that bad! but I very specifically told Mr. D in the middle of it that I had NO desire to EVER do that again. yeah, similar to labor, except I didn’t even say that when I had either of my kids, lol.

this video is a very tame idea of what we were doing (and you really can’t tell how STEEP it was)! I really regret that I couldn’t video the insane parts, for obvious reasons (like staying alive). seriously, the government actually shut down that part of Rio Celeste because too many people were getting hurt. but I guess it was a little hard to caution tape up the middle of the jungle, so it was more of a “hey, you’re not supposed to go in there”…

again, this part is pretty tame

(this is a little more what it was like, but still only a small idea – it was not just one mile, remember)

and it was slightly muddy…

this is how my shoes came out,
and the others were confounded by how VERY clean they were…?
but I failed to get a picture of their shoes.

we had to cross a few bridges along the way

 

this is where the two waters meet – see the regular water on the left, and the blue water on the right

here’s a video I found of the waters meeting, kinda cool

as you might remember, Mr. D is the photographer of the family, not I

here is one of his shots, I haven’t had time to go through them all yet

so was it worth it???

sigh. well, I’m glad it is over!

I suppose that since I already don’t remember the pain very well, I’m glad I did it.

we all joked that we need shirts that say “I survived Rio Celeste!”

I’m sure you’ve figured out by now that I am not much of let’s-go-climb-a-mountain! sort of girl… and I’m sure Krista will come on and remind me how old I am, lol

but if you ever want to go to Rio Celeste, Costa Rica, I’m pretty sure I’ll say
“have fun! I’ll see you when you get back!”

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