Learning how to say Thanks.

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Aaron and I went out on a date last night and ended up finding this cafe in downtown Healdsburg. It was freezing and I really just wanted some hot soup. We drove around, parked, then stumbled into the low lit and empty cafe on the corner and were relieved to find that it was open. We saw some couches in the corner and the nice hippie guy let us sit down with our menus. Soup was at the top and it looked delicious!

Last Thursday was Thanksgiving, for those of you who missed out on that news. We went and spent it with family and it was really nice. Luckily, we didn't go around the table and say what we were thankful for because that's so awkward, and really, everyone just wants to eat anyway. We played football with the kids and launched rockets that scared our dog half to death, and we finished up the dinner with pumpkin pie and charades. A good day.

We were pretty tired after all the festivities and decided to drive back home the next morning, and get a little relaxation time before the kids came back. Feeling really lazy on Saturday morning, we threw on semi-church clothes (I still wore my house slippers), and walked across the street to church to see if anyone showed up. There was a small gathering of faculty families and we studied about the 10 lepers in Luke and how only one actually came back to say thanks to Jesus. I was really struck by the other guys' sense of entitlement. Like Jesus was just a can of miracles, and all they had to do was pop it open and redeem their prize, and then just keep going about their business. But the last guy's heart was stirred in a way that he couldn't keep still and was just uncontrollably overwhelmed with a sense of thanksgiving and amazement that he jumped for joy and fell at the feet of Jesus and said Thank You a million times over.

I totally feel like those 9 guys, most days. I feel really entitled to all these "blessings" I even have to put quotes around blessings because honestly, it seems like a stretch to call every day things that I am authentically entitled to, "blessings". And what's wrong with this? Why should I have to be thankful for a hot shower, a warm bed, a loving husband, or a nice home? Didn't I work for these things? Don't I deserve this after all I've done?

The answer, of course, is yes-I sure do need to be thankful for this stuff! It gets so easy to complain about all the stuff going wrong in my life that I miss out on savoring the good stuff. Which brings me back to the Cafe Gratitude place. The whole theme of the place is thankfulness, and recognizing all the ways that you are blessed. There's even a box of questions on every table that asks insightful things like, "How do you take care of your body?", "Name three people who have been there for you in the past year", and "What are some things that you have that you don't deserve?"...etc. And as strange and slightly cheesy as it was, it did make us very grateful at the time, especially for the surprise that the soup came out cold, and we figured out that this cafe was one of those raw restaurants. But instead of grumbling, the theme had already set into our bones and we devoured our cold buckwheat-crusted "pizza" topped with pesto, tomato and cashew ricotta. Instead of feeling gypped for not getting hot greasy food, we kept exclaiming how healthy we felt after eating each bite.

Here's just a short list of things I'm saying Thank You for:

-healthy and loving family
-that Aaron comes from such a great family
-we are really happy here
-we love our jobs
-we get paid to love people
-we get to go home for Christmas
-we don't have immediate uncertainty about anything (which is how we've lived for the past 3 years)
-we have a warm bed, hot shower, cute dog, piano, tv, food
-we live in a beautiful place
-we have people who regularly encourage and support us
=facebook. i'm really thankful for facebook!
-we have health insurance
-we are led and loved by God-and that is all we need

Shooting up the town

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Some of you may not know that I'm attempting to become a photographer. As frustrating as it can be to start a business in this economy, I've been having the feeling (well, really for most of my life), that I would not want to work for anyone else but myself. In an attempt to get there, I'll be launching the first part of my business, Rika Fotografia, in the beginning of 2011. So in preparation for that leap, I've been shooting local families, seniors, and friends for discounted rates to build my local portfolio. And holy cow! I haven't done that many family portraits before! It's a new and super fun challenge! So watch and listen for news of my mobile studio. Because, hey! I studied photography in college, dang it! It's about time I really used it! I'm not just one of those people who has a camera and newly discovered this art after taking lots of pictures of her dog and got inspired. Okay, I'm climbing off my soap box. (no offense to all you newly inspired photographers). Anywho, I've always loved shooting people most of all and hope to do it forever! Here's a preview of what's been happening-more to come!

From Portfolio


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A Break!

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This is the B&B we stayed at! It's over 100 years old.



All of us need a break every now and then. Especially the people who live in a highly social, intense environment, such as a boarding school. The last few weeks, we’ve all been a little more short with each other. The girls in my study hall have been messy and slacking off more and I’ve definitely snapped at a couple and banded food from our rec room where we study. The kids haven’t had as much energy lately, and walk around with these long, tired faces, desperate for a break of some kind. And now, we are sitting in this quiet dorm, waiting for the last couple of boys to leave, before we can all experience a little relief from each other and renewed energy.

Let me back up just a little, because I do realize it’s been ages since I’ve updated the blog, and hopefully this will offer you a bit of an explanation why. About a month ago, I was hired to work at the Boys & Girls Club of Windsor. (hurray! I got a job!) What a relief to have a reason to get dressed in the morning and get out of bed before 10 am! It doesn’t pay that hot, but hey, I get to work for a great cause, and it’s only 4 or 5 hours a day, leaving me time to work on my other projects. The work that I do there is mostly a kid-wrangler. We have 250+ 1st-8th graders and we do everything from tutoring them, to teaching activities, to entertainment, to mentoring. Actually, it’s pretty similar to our English Wilderness teaching jobs in Taiwan, only it’s half the day and we all speak the same language for the most part. I need to brush up on my Espanol!

About the time that I was hired, I also got a call to help launch the Healdsburg branch of Patch.com. For those of you who don’t know about Patch, it’s a hyperlocal approach to journalism, sort of like an online community newspaper. I was hired on as a freelance photographer and slowly started taking on more projects and am now a columnist! We launch Nov. 30, and I get paid to go to parties and events and take pictures!

I’ve also been helping the school with some articles and publication photography for the website as well as a future redesign of the marketing materials that they give out to prospective students. I’ve been trying to build my portfolio in order to launch my photo business by January 2011. (more of that later).

So wow, I have been so so busy! Aaron thinks I don’t know when to stop. Busy-ness is addictive and I love to say that magic word, “YES”, to all these great ideas that come my way. But I think I’m just about at my limit and I hope it starts to settle down a little. A few weeks ago, after a bit of rough patches in the dorm, Aaron and I decided to take a 24-hour vacation to the coast and we stayed at this Bed & Breakfast just yards away from the sea. It was so nice to be able to have no interruptions from people, and we had no cell service or WI-FI so we couldn’t be distracted by our iPhones. So peaceful. Now I hope this coming week off will bring a little more of that serenity. Because we want to give of ourselves to our kids here, but we need to be filled again to have the capacity to do that.