Life List or Dream List

I saw this list at someone's blog, and I knew I had to "steal" it and use it here. I always had a list of short-term and long-term goals, just not a name for it, like Life List. It's fun to see what I have accomplished already - it makes me feel less of a failure. The lady had some rules to it, I don't want to do that. But I actually came up with two lists instead, one of accomplishments, the other of dreams and goals for my future.

Also, she called it a Life List because she wanted to make a point as to have dreams come true in a lifetime, not working towards death. I agree. Bucket List is also not a very nice title. So I go with Life list, or maybe Dream List. I can change things if I want to, like when I think something is not that important to me anymore, I can remove it and add something else. Life is ever so changing, so my list can be as well.

So without further ado, here is my list:

1. Write and publish a book - not sure if that would be a children's book or a more serious one
2. Go to the Olympics - summer or winter
3. Put my feet in each ocean
4. Start my own business
5. Talk with a homeless person and help out
6. Get over my fear of public speaking
7. Visit each of the 50 states (of the USA)
8. Train and run in a race, preferably a half-marathon, or even a marathon
9. Anonymously pay for someone else's meal at a restaurant
10. Sit on and drive a motorcycle
11. Learn to play the piano (correctly!)
12. Swim with dolphins
13. Go on a helicopter ride
14. Hike up to Machu Picchu
15. Walk on the Great Wall of China
16.  See the Pyramids in Egypt and ride on a camel
17.  See the Taj Mahal in India
18. Go to Rome and see the Colosseum
19. See the Hagia Sophia (in Turkey)
20. Go to Jerusalem and the Holy Land
21. Visit Australia
22. Go snorkeling - preferably at Great Barrier Reef
23. Learn to say "hello" in 50 languages
24. Have a library in my house (one room just filled with books!)
25. Reach and maintain my ideal weight for the rest of my life
26. Ride a gondola in Venice
27. Go sailing on a real sailboat, maybe even around the world
28. Be in a hot-air balloon
29. Make a huge change in someone's life
30. Go on a cruise (a real one, not just the two-hour sunset cruise I did already!)
31. Visit every continent
32. Be a mentor to someone
33. Plan and execute a 365-day photo shoot
34. Have my portrait painted
35. Volunteer at a soup kitchen
36. Teach German in a foreign country
37. Cross a glacier on foot
38. Make a Family Tree at least four generations back
39. Write some kind of biography
40. Pilgrimage to Santiago de Compostela
41. Learn Hebrew
42. Have my own Photography Exhibition
43. Climb Mount Kilimanjaro (Tanzania, Africa)
44. Go to a Fashion Show
45. Read ten thousand books
46. Host a dinner party
47. Visit Stonehenge
    
48. See a Highland castle (in Scotland)
    
49. Go whale-watching
50. Donate money and put my name on something like a bench or brick
    

Okay, after that wish list, I have come up with a list of things that have happened already, so it's more of an accomplishment list. Things I have done so far:

1. Survived Cancer
2. Danced in the rain
3. Driven across the United States from coast to coast, and back
4. Skipped school
5. Eye witnessed an historic event (the fall of the Berlin Wall & 9/11)
6. Gone skydiving
7. Lived in more than one country
8. Flown a kite
9. Watched the sunrise / sunset 
10. Visited Ground Zero
11. Sang Karaoke (in New Orleans on 9/11)
12. Be in NYC on New Year's Eve
13. Seen a falling star and made a wish
14. Attended a Wine Tasting at a winery
15. Visited the Grand Canyon
16. Placed a bet in Las Vegas
17. Ridden on a San Francisco cable car
18. Been horse back riding - with the Navajo Indians through Monument Valley
19. Traveled by train through three countries 
20. Been in a rainforest
21. Gone to school in a different country
22. Swam in the Mediterranean Sea
23. Been White Water Rafting
24. Sewn an actual garment (here, and here, and here, and here)
25. Climbed the Eiffel Tower
26. Witnessed a solar eclipse 
27. Slept under the stars
28. Seen the Tour de France live
29. Planted a tree
30. Wrote my will
31. Spent a whole (!) day reading
32. Drove the Autobahn - no speed limit
33. Published one of my photographs in a magazine
34. Be a mom
35. Bathed in a hot spring
36. Learned how to bake bread
37. Ran a 5K as a timed runner (in NYC)
38. Seen a child being born
39. Drive along Route 66 (USA)
40. Drove a convertible with the top down 
41. Seen Mont Saint Michel (France), Notre Dame, and Sacre Coeur 
42. Dyed my hair red

So this list is a little shorter, it makes me feel like I have done some things in my life. I guess, once again, I can say that I feel so blessed. Now I have to work on some of those goals....

What about you? Do you have dreams and goals in your life? What is it (if you want to share)?

Home Sweet Home

We are back home! Yeah....

After a long day of flying and a long say of settling in, I am back online, ready to write of our adventures. But first, I feel I need to update you on things what my kids are doing these days:

Coqui was a good boy, doing school (almost) every day at grandma's house. I also got to spend some money at the closing Borders in Jersey, for some homeschooling books - yippy!
He had so much fun with Mema, Buelo, and Tia. He also got to see some of his cousins, and some of my friends' kids. So he had plenty of time to interact with lots of different people - such a social bug!
He got to play in (a tiny bit of) snow - made snow angels and a micro snow lady. he got to go to the beach, on the coldest day we were there - 28 degrees - but he had fun making "snow" angels in the sand and built a sand castle.

Peanut has been talking up a storm and learns new words every day - some come out pretty clear, others sound pretty funny (or awful). Coqui is still her best friend and she is so lost without him. She could care less about all the other people she met - even though she got pretty attached to her Mema.
She can climb up and down stairs now, all by herself, like a big girl. She loved to run around in circles with Buelo, right before bedtime.
But the biggest change is that she is not having her night bottle anymore! Yeah, for me. That was one of the two things I needed to work on, but she is so stubborn. So one night, she didn't listen and I had to "punish" her in putting her in her bed, standing up, until she was doing what I asked her to do. Nope, she had no intentions of doing so, so I told her she will go to bed without the bottle. Apparently that was not important enough to say sorry to her aunt after throwing toys at her. So she went to bed without that stupid bottle, and the night after and after that too..... she is still asking for it but there is no way I give it back to her! Enough.

So yeah, that's pretty good. I got to run alot, and train for my first official 5K. I got to go shopping without the kids. There was even a sleepover at Tia's house, without the kids. I got to see some of my friends, the closest ones and the most important ones! So I am happy. But I am also happy to be back home, in my own house, in my own bed, and with my husband.

Home Sweet Home.

A Prayer For Today

Today, I got disappointed. And while I don't want to remble why and what, I just found this prayer that says it all (here) and I just want to pray instead of reliving the disappointment.

O God, you know me better than I know myself
and you know how disappointed I have been at this time.

The things that I had set my heart on
were not for me.

The friends I trusted proved untrue.

I honestly tried so hard,
and yet I failed.

Help me, O God,
To accept things as they are.
Help me not to waste my time
on vain regrets and unhappy memories.

Help me to begin again
and to try again.

Help me always to look forward
and not back.

Help me to forget the things
that are behind and
Ever to press forward
to the things which are ahead.

This I ask for your love’s sake, Amen.

Not a writer's block

Sorry that I have not written much these days. I went away to the grandparents' house. That alone is not an excuse to not write.

But...

.. I dropped my laptop and now it is not working anymore. (*sad face*)

Now I will be back home in two weeks, and then I will have alot of catching-up to do! Until then, please be patient with me, and you can read some of my older posts, if you like...

See you soon!

Kids and God

If you don't know it yet, I only became a Christian about six years ago. I did not grow up in a church, so to see my own kids soaking up all they hear and learn in Sunday school and at home, it just makes me so happy! Maybe they can avoid a few of my mistakes, mistakes I made because I did not know God. Here are a few situations when Coqui has proven that he is listening.....

This morning, we did our weekly shopping trip to the local supermarket. At the cash register, the kids can get Buddies that can be put into a machine and out come buddy points. When we were in the car, driving home, he told me all about how he asked nicely for the buddies and then got a pretty high number on points out of the machine. So I said: "now Mami just has to figure out what to do with those points".

And Coqui told me, in his simple way, that I just "have to ask God and He'll tell me". Wow. It makes me so proud. And it proves how simple it actually is. Trust in God, ask for what your heart desires, and expect to get it. (amen to that)

A few months ago, we went to our friend's house. At the last light, Coqui announced that he has to go potty. Usually that is not a problem, I just pull over because I always have the portable potty in the trunk. But it was the last light, so I told him to hold it because we are almost there. Telling me how badly he had to go, he almost cried, so I told him to pray to God to change the light into green so we would get faster to our friend's house and he can go to the bathroom there. Well, he prayed and the light changed immediately. To him, that was like magic! So when we went to the same house last week, the light was red again, and I guess he had to go to the bathroom, again. He must have prayed in his head, because when the light changed pretty quickly into green, he yelled "God heard me again" from the back of the car.

Recently, I started to add bible study to our schooling. I do it right during breakfast, so I have both kids at the table and their full attention. For some reason, I opened the book to a story about how Jesus healed a man that couldn't walk. Coqui is very interested in 'handicapped' people - maybe because we have two blind girls coming to our church. The cool thing is that he actually remembers those stories from one day to another, or even over the weekend. His brain is just such a sponge. Well, back to the main issue, when hearing all those stories he tries to apply them to his own life. Like he would exclaim how he prayed to God to heal his boo-boo and it got healed. Or how God saved him from getting crushed when he decided he needed to open every single draw of his dresser and the dresser actually tipped over. Really, Coqui had this guardian angel and it saved him from being crushed under the dresser! His foot got hurt a little, but again was not crushed because one if his name train letters was in the way, and got broken in the ordeal - but we believe that this letter, it was the 'O', saved his foot. God is good - all the time!