By Nicole

The other day the whole family packed up and headed into Port Angeles and Sequim for a day of crabbing, shrimping and oyster shucking... Jason, brave and awesome dad that he is, held the sole honor of shucking, since I had Leilee in the Napsack and Connor and Grady are much too young to wield oyster shuckers. Jason also had the cool dad idea of packing the kids' bikes in the back of the truck and letting them ride on the pier. We brought helmets because I said it was the law. Now, some of you may think, 'Wow, how adventurous!' It's true, it is adventurous. But we embark on excursions like this all the time. Jason is a brave and bold outdoorsman. He hunts and fishes and scouts and forages all day long. If I didn't know him better and he had a longer beard, I would think he was a mountain man. So, like any good mountain dad, he wants to raise his sons (and daughter) to be mountain children. I'm all for that. Definitely... besides my uncontrollable urges...

"And a certain sign of grace is this.... through broken earth, flowers come up, pushing through the dirt." What a foolish notion, grace. Who deserves it? Many feel they don't need it. Only fools understand and accept it. The educated scoff at the idea that men, the most "evolved" species with the highest intelligence would have need of God's love and forgiveness. After all, we are capable of doing good. Those of us who are positive forces in the community, who believe in the inner good of man and the power of being in balance and in tune with nature and ourselves have no need of grace. We are good enough on our own. We don't hurt anyone. We pay taxes. We put a nickel or a dollar in the little red bucket yearly. Some of us volunteer, donate our old clothes and fundraise for orphans. We have no need for unconditional love. We are educated. We majored in humanities. We realize that some choose to do bad things, but it is what we believe that d...

Ahhh, life. Doesn't it move quickly? Who are we to think that we have any control? Why do we try to cram so much in? Wouldn't it make more sense to travel through life one major life event/crisis/phase at a time? Wouldn't it make even more sense to slow down, enjoy what matters and quit letting the stupid stuff stress us out? Just the other night Jason and I had a teary (postpartum - back off) conversation about how quickly our kids are growing up and how at the end of the day, when they are tucked in and drifting off to sleep... it is just that, another day. Another day gone, a day older, a day that we can't make up or redo. What were we like that day? Did we feel like we had been good parents or bad parents? Had we gotten too frustrated or angry over something just plain stupid? How did we make their life better? Or did we make it worse? We have a lot going on and a lot of pressure on both of us to take care of all the junk we think is important. I keep ta...

So, about two and a half years ago, a dear friend of mine, who also happens to be a financial guru in my opinion, got me onto the envelope budget and accompanying debt repayment calculation Excel spreadsheet. Jason and I had been essentially living from paycheck to paycheck with good intentions of getting everything paid off, but we still spent every two weeks looking at each other and wondering where all our "extra" money went. Yeah - he would work his butt off doing all the overtime possible... just to hear me say that we didn't have any money. Somehow we were throwing it all away... We jumped into a new life of budgeting... every pay period I would faithfully enter in our payments, check credit card balances, and fill our hand labeled envelopes with the cash we were allowed to spend on groceries and miscellaneous. Let me tell you - the envelopes didn't have to be very big. We faithfully put money into savings every paycheck. I even began to tithe like I was suppose...

There are many things I would like to do when I am independently wealthy...(read into that...!)but, nevertheless, I think there is one more thing I need to do... I have come to the conclusion that there are individuals who strive to take on as many things as possible just to see if they can handle it. They may blame it on things like their desire to help, their inability to say no, or just plain stupidity, but I am positive that most of those individuals (way deep down) really just take it all on to see if they can handle it. Hectic days and busy nights are symptoms of an overachiever. Overachievers aren't happy with just a 40 hour a week job and a family. They need at least one church, sporting and extracurricular activity per family member to be going on. They need distance learning or online classes for a back up degree. Throw in some pets, a couple hobbies, housework, yardwork, and a blog, and they're in business. Overachievers have this sick, twisted desire to see ho...

Where to start. Over the course of the past four months I have done two entirely unrelated things (I have also done LOTS more unrelated stuff - like deep clean my refrigerator, clean, grind, cut and wrap 70 lbs of deer meat (with Jason ), sew a merman tail and learn to make cedar roses - but those are not part of this particular story). So the two things... begin my Christmas shopping super early (in order to avoid stress, relax and enjoy the Reason for the Season) AND slowly let frustrations regarding events mostly beyond my control pile up and stress me out until I sometimes want to scream and run down the street pulling my hair and basically making a complete fool of myself. Soooo, all stress that would have been relieved by Christmas shopping early, has now multiplied much beyond what it ever would have been EVEN if I had waited until Christmas Eve and marathon shopped. Every night and every weekend I have told myself - now is the time to relax, let it go, in the grand scheme of ...

Lately I have been reading lots of home decorating magazines, excited with the prospect of having a house in the next year or so... I have also missed work due to a sick self and sick children and got so behind in housework that I would not voluntarily invite friends or the county health nurse over for tea. The combination of reading lots of "home" magazines and being unable to do ANY housework is not mentally or emotionally healthy, especially when paired with the guilt that comes from not necessarily missing work, but feeling like I should be there because I have so much to do, and then feeling doubly guilty that I am feeling guilty about not being at work when I should be happy and relieved that I am spending quality time with my children, even if we are sick, because usually I feel guilty when I am at work because I am not with them.... (Only the working mothers reading this will FULLY understand me, but hopefully most of you have some idea of what I am trying to convey)....