Rooster Pox and Happy Solstice to all!

Well, what a week. Or two. Aloka came down with chicken pox last Friday, or "rooster pox" as she likes to call it. In fact, a couple days ago she said "mama, do chickens get human pox?". She's very curious about the whole chicken connection to it all.
She's been handling it pretty well, actually. She only had a low fever for a few days, and she's barely scratching anything. She only had one night of somewhat restless sleep due to discomfort. I'm posting this video only because my blog settings are private and not open to the public. But it was just such a funny one! And you can see the good spirits she's been in through the whole thing.

And this one was just when she was starting to break out:


Her pox are now starting to crust over and heal and she's definitely over the worst of it, which wasn't even so bad.
I've never had chicken pox as far as I know, if you can believe it. So I've actually lived my whole life in fear of getting them as an adult. I even had a blood test many years ago which confirmed that I never got it.
I often thought that because I had been exposed to it many times as a child, I perhaps just got a mild case or something, but no such luck. But, now that we're here in the feared and dreaded Chicken Pox land, I have very little concern. I feel strong, healthy, and I'll just deal with it if I get it.
We were both exposed to it on the 19th, and she got her first pox on the 22nd. I'm still going strong so I'm wondering and hoping that maybe I'm one of those folks that has a natural immunity.

Luckily, we celebrate the Solstice so we didn't miss any holiday activities, seeing as on Xmas day we were all in quite a different space than most.

We had a very nice Children's Day as it's called in my Buddhist upbringing.
We set up a beautiful Children's Day shrine with a King and Queen at the top. They symbolize the King and Queen of the kingdom of Shambhala, an enlightened society.


Aloka loves the King and Queen! When we put them up, she said "mama, are they always meditating?" and "mama, are they always Japanese?"
While she was at school on Solstice (Thursday), the King and Queen brought her some gifts, and some treats were place on the shrine. She was so excited when she came home! It was so magical.

Here's a picture of the giant rainbow silk that we gave Aloka for her Children's Day present.


She is such a "delayed gratification" type of personality. She nibbles a little bit of chocolate, and then hides it in her fort. Believe it or not, the chocolate is still in there today! Occasionally, she asks me if she can have a little nibble even though she's sick. She definitely did NOT get that from me!! My chocolate is gone before I even realize I ate it!

On Thursday evening, we had Melissa, Nick and Nile over for french onion soup that Josh made (so YUM!) and a nice salad. We had a great time. Melissa has some nice pics on her latest blog entry too. Here's a great one of Aloka and Nile that Melissa took below! Melissa made an awesome shirt for Aloka as a gift, with the word "Authentic" on it. I really want to see her sell these, they're great!

And lastly, here are a couple pictures that Melissa took of Aloka and I with our Tribal Belly dance turbans on!
























I still have yet to post about the lovely advent spiral we did with Aloka's school plus the Waldorf Xmas faire, so next time!

Our reindeer visit

A few weeks ago, Josh was up really late at night and heard a loud crunching and chewing outside his office window. His window is up high, maybe 8 feet above the ground. There is a large bush just outside the window and he kept hearing it whacking against the glass.
Suddenly a huge pair of lips was staring right at him through the window! He jumped up and came into the bedroom to wake me up. He said "sweetie, i think there's a moose outside my window!" By the time i got to waking up and coming out to look Josh told me it wasn't actually a moose after all, but in fact 10 or so HUGE elk! There were babies too. It was so cool! I had no idea how enormous elk are, wow!!
I wish i could have gotten some better photos, but as it goes, it was late and our flash kind of spooked them.

Mbira night

We have been attending an "mbira night" every Tuesday evening. Mbira nights usually start with a potluck dinner at 5pm, and then we move on the the jamming! There were 10 or so people at this gathering, and there have been two more now as well.
The mbira sits inside a large calabash gourd, also called "deze", which amplifies the mbira.
The shakers are called "hosho" and are the heartbeat of the music. We had so much fun, and Aloka just loves mbira nights! She is constantly amazing me at how musical and rhythmic she is!
The person in this video below that I'm sitting next to is Kris, my awesome mbira teacher. He is a talented percussionist and musician. He is also the one with the yellow deze.
In case anyone is wondering what happened to the belly dance post, i removed it because of privacy issues with the dancers not wanting to be on the internet, which i completely understand!
So here are some videos of mbira night!


and here's one more of the same song, which is called "mbavarira" or (she takes me away) and I'm posting it because it's longer so you can hear more of the song, which has become one of my favorites. I often just sit up at night and get lost in it, playing it for a long time and unaware of how much time is passing. It's such a beautiful one.
A friend is lending me one of the most beautiful mbira on this earth and I've been playing it constantly. It has a very watery quality, and I think it sounds like mermaids singing underwater, or perhaps what the sirens must have sounded like in Odysseus. It's incredibly hypnotic and mesmerizing.


Ok, here's one of the bellydance videos that i can still put up here. This is the video of the beautiful tribal belly dancers and then the contrasting style just after them. Josh and were joking that the latter kind of reminds us of the Laker girls "eastern" style or something!

Cute little girl!

Dancing at a Xmas faire

Aloka sure does love dancing! That elderly man got a kick out of her too. This is the same faire that the picture of Melissa and Nile is from down below this post.

My dear friend Melissa!

I just love this photo of Melissa and her little boy Nile! This was taken in the kitchen of a Christmas Craft Faire. Melissa was selling some of her delicious goodies there.

Mimi and Baba

That's what Aloka calls her Grandparents (Josh's mom and dad). My last post had a few snippits of Jim outside with us, but I have many more photos!
We had a great time, and Aloka was on cloud 9. They brought her a giant heap of beautiful clothes from Europe when they were there last July, which was so incredible. The clothes there are just so well made and beautiful!

Every morning she would wake up and then wake me up saying "mama , mama, mama can I go out to see Mimi and Baba? And of course we'd mumble in our sleep, "No, they're still sleeping". Then she'd tiptoe over to the door and peek out to see if she could hear them. If she did, she'd get so excited and come tell me "they're awake!!" And then go out to see them, at first feeling shy, and then as soon as they greeted her with open arms, she'd crawl into their bed (This is what she did, based on what she'd tell me later. Josh and I were always taking the blissful opportunity to sleep in!)

We didn't really do much for American Thanksgiving, but if you can call Indian food celebrating, we sure did that! We went to a nice little Indian restaurant Josh and I had never been to before (called "Baba's", ha! Aloka especially found that funny) and it was so yummy! Josh and I are definitely going back soon! We also went to a nice but freezing cold Christmas craft faire. It was held in the hockey arena so they had put a temporary floor on the ice, and it was freezing!! I felt so sorry for the vendors. Last year this same faire was in a really nice place where the ambiance and the temperature was much warmer. I looked at the paper that weekend and there were 9 craft faires!! Then 5 more the next weekend, and still more this weekend. Nelson and the surrounding areas are so rich with arts and crafts!
Then on Sunday the 26th we celebrated Josh's 32nd birthday! In the morning while we were still sleeping, Jim, Lynn and Aloka
hung streamers and balloons up all over the place. When we got up, I made a pancake breakfast and Josh opened his presents.
What fun!

On the day they left, Aloka said goodbye to them in the morning, and then went to school. She was so so sad about them leaving.

I took a couple pictures of Aloka (the one on the left) and the other children coming out of Dena's house (where the playgroup is), I just love icicles! We have some huge ones at our house too, it's been so snowy here this past week!
We have a lot of fun Waldorfy types of events coming up in the next week. We'll be doing an "advent spiral" which I'll post about afterwards, and there is also the famous (in the Waldorf ciruit) "Waldorf Winter Faire", where you can find all sorts of beautiful handmade crafts, furniture, toys, you name it. You can imagine what it's like in a town like Nelson; there's an abundance of beautiful wares!

Here is also a photo just after I picked her up from school, and she's talking to Josh on my (new) cell phone.









So, I have so many more photos I'm just going to put them here at the bottom!

Aloka and Mimi doing some caterpillar crafts

Our budding photographer took this

And this...

Josh and Jim wearing matching hats. It was Aloka's idea to go get her matching one too.

In case you're wondering, Aloka insisted on getting a "scary" tattoo. It's some kind of biker tattoo from a vending machine. She was determined.

At a "burger joint" for lunch


Josh and his Dad (the family resemblance amuses me. I realized in a photo I didn't post, that they have identical noses!)


A special moment with Mimi