Well here I am sitting at a real kitchen table, no vibrations running through my frame, no rumble of wheels on concrete. It's been It's been a little over two months since Mark's mom rose into paradise, but it seems like it's been longer, and at times it seems like just yesterday she was playing Scrabble on her computer. It's amazing how time loses its definition when you get closer to eternity.

Life has been somewhat of a blur, speckled with tiny islands of clarity. Some of the clear moments have been when I've been focused on jewelry projects. Each one begins with a challenge, an idea with the need to become a reality, and through trial and error becomes a solid finished piece of my character. It's quite thereputic, and the need to focus my creative energy on solid materials is somehow very grounding.

It has been rather easy in my life to get spread very thin, with so many possibilities before me each day. My musical instruments are peppered throughout the condo, and my jewelry bench invites me with its array of bright tools and colored stones. My family is always on my mind in the mornings, from the time I pray for them till I get immersed in some project, so I find myself calling one or two of them each day. My laptop sits open and it's easy to get lost in the avalanche of emails, I can spend hours trying to trim down the hundreds, and answer as many as I can. Then there is our web page, facebook, and my etsy website which all need to be maintained and updated. 

We do eat sometimes, and I do housework in the mornings vacuming, sweeping, laundry, putting away the clean dishes from the night before. The challenge comes in balancing all these things, and still having time for music. It has taken discipline in choosing carefully my goals for each day, not allowing myself to get burried in any one thing for too long, giving myself time to do a portion of at least three artistic things. This seems to be working for me here "resting from the road" in mom's condo!

 I wake up in the morning and before I even get out of bed I pray, and then check my texts and emails! Usually this leads to other businessy things, so I have to dicipline myself to stop and eat breakfast. This morning I decided that my jewelry project had lain around long enough, so I designed the frame you see above in the photos and began working on that, between helping Natanyah, and phone calls! I'm hoping to build this up enough to have another income stream, to help us when we are not touring. It's almost 5:00 pm now, and I can't believe it came so quickly! I'm not done with my project but I've made a good start. Once I get an idea moving it usually comes together pretty quickly.

I've been sitting too long (bad for my slow circulation) so I'm going to get up and try to do some active things for awhile! Then I'll probably try to finish my necklace and get it up on my Etsy Shop! I did booking work yesterday, and will do it again tomorrow. I'm trying to fill in some holes before I start booking for the fall/winter next week. At least I've been sleeping a bit better the last couple of nights. I get more accomplished when I can think straight!

We are planning on taking a Sabbatical from "full time" traveling next year. We aren't sure yet where on earth (and I mean that literally!) to settle. With two more Asia trips planned, we're wondering if it would be easier to settle on the other side of the globe! We are praying, and we'll see what happends this next trip. That will hopfully give us something to go on, a leading, one way or another. We are planning on continuing to produce new music during that time, as a matter of fact we hope to have a new album by the end of next year. I'm excited to have time to really work on my music again. It's been hard to be a good musician, when I have so little time to effecivly practice all my instruments!

 I've decided to use a "Blog" format to make entries about stuff I'm doing and am interested in, and just thoughts I may have. My private life is really quite similar to many of yours, it's just a moving life, as in on wheels! So some stuff gets a little more complicated, and tricky! Like how on earth do you raise kids on the road! Natanyah barely remembers our old house! All the other girls were older when we started. She was 6 when we first started touring, and the last 7 years of her life have been full time gypsy life!

In some ways it's been like any family with a family business, where the children are raised in the back of the store, or restaurant, and learn early to mop floors, wait on customers, and help in many other ways. In some ways this life has been wonderful. All the girls have seen and been places other kids only read about in books. History and geography have been a breeze to teach as we traveled and home schooled. Other things have been harder, like not having your own space, not being able to see your friends when you want to. That's been hard for all of us (I miss my organic garden, and my friends!) But those same difficulties had a silver lining. We grew very close knit as a family, when there were problems we couldn't run away, we had to deal with them and work things out.

I'll continue with more as time allows. I hope you enjoy my meanderings!