Category Archives: my children

Yesterday

October 26, 2011 – 6:58 pm

Yesterday.

Yesterday Junie and I went on a date. We both looked forward to it all day long, I love how I can feel pressure to make it fun and make a really cool memory with her (or any of them on these dates), but then when we get out on our own, it’s all about her and me and it’s wonderful just because all of my attention is on her. I have nothing else to do but be with her. Her essence completely fills the June mold under these circumstances. She is herself through and through with no influence from the others causing her any kind of tension, she is at peace and she shines. I love that, and I just love her so much!

First stop Toys ‘R’Us for the special toy she has been wanting for a long time. She earned it. I told her the Bible store was next door and she agreed to go look when I told her they have tiny pink Bibles, hee! It was big chain Christian store and just being in there did something to me. I used to work at Joy’s Christian Bookstore in San Juan Capistrano, I was in charge of the greeting cards. It was fun when it didn’t cause a wave of fatigue to wash over me, just looking in “my” section. I even used to get that weird thing where words lose their meaning when you’ve looked at them too long. I didn’t recognize “father,” fat-her? Or “mother,” moth-er. It made me feel funny.

Without the occurrences of the fatigue and semantic satiation, being back in that element was really, really comfortable, peaceful and pleasant. I hadn’t expected it to be since my spirituality now runs in stark contrast to so much of the material for sale there. But there were the Bibles. Aaaahhhh, I love Bibles. I used to get to engrave them. One time I messed up on one and it was the last one we had of its kind, the customer was going to have to wait for us to order, receive process and engrave a brand new one. Joy didn’t even get mad at me or the situation! I never messed up again. I took pride in getting it exact. You can’t leave the stamper down too long or the gold will spread and the letters won’t be clear. In tattooing they call it “blown out” when the needle is put in too far and/or stay in the same place for too long and the lines get thick and blurred.

I wanted a new Bible last night, but didn’t buy one. We did get the tiny pink New Testament for June and later in the car I filled in the presentation page. “Presented to: June Elise Stankovits; On: October 25th, 2011 (I almost forgot the 2 in 25th, but I squeezed it in); By: your loving mother; On our wonderful date! I heart u so much!!

We walked on over to Best Buy after that and got Sid and Jonny their video game and movie, then it was back to the car to open Junie’s Minnie Cash Register, that very special toy. As we sat in the car checking it out, she was so happy and content to be just there -she could have pickedanywhere to go- I became tense with the need to be productive. Sid asked us to bring home ice cream and dinner. I hadn’t been feeling great, so I wanted a comforting, light dinner and as I tried to decide on what to eat, exhaustion settled into my entire brain, slowing it down and locking the drawers to some of my vocabulary files. June asked me to play. I didn’t want to play, I wanted to get just the right food and get home. I became emotional and knew I needed to let go and play. We took things out of my purse, June rang them up with the scanner thing on her new toy and I paid for them with Minnie money and a Minnie credit card.

I wanted to cry and I didn’t know why. I looked out the window, toward the sunset, and while I couldn’t see the sun at all, somehow it was reflecting brightly off of some palm fronds high on a tree. At first it reminded me of golden tinsel, as if someone had dropped bunches of it into the fronds and there it hung, flickering and shining in the breeze. I pointed it out to June. It overwhelmed me with its beauty and then I perceived the effect more like the fronds had been lit with fire and the tips of them were smoldering. It was amazing. All my cares evaporated. I wasn’t going through anything very grave, but I was going through something and then suddenly I wasn’t and then I cried for the peace and wonder. June didn’t want me to cry, she even cried with me, so I stopped. I had my camera and so I did my best with my super zoom to capture the smoldering fronds. Haaaaaahh (that’s supposed to be a peaceful exhalation).

We played some more. Rung up more of the contents of my purse, hand sanitizer, my wallet, a teething toy, a Transformer, a little bottle of lotion and my cell phone.

The fronds burned into my soul. When June was ready, we buckled in and headed out. I made it peacefully through Sprout’s getting salad stuff and ice cream and stuff, June had a nice time because she was in the stroller, she loves to ride in it and usually Indy is the passenger. It was all normal, but I felt different, though still exhausted and hungry, I was okay. At home I had that feeling of my cup running over just looking around at my children, at Sid. It’s that feeling of such utter contentment that you think maybe your going to die soon cause you must be getting closer to the Ultimate Peace. Haaaaaahhhh. I was patient in that state, and loving, and fun and happy, so happy. What keeps me from being in this state all of the time? Unconscious living? Forgetting to direct my awareness and attention to God? Overfocusing on what isn’t done yet? I think so. Lord let those palm fronds stay alight in my heart reminding me to look to you. Let me always be the woman, mother, wife and Jennifer, that I was last night. She was so beautiful.

Sid snapped those and I’m so glad he did! : )

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The circle skirt

August 15, 2011 – 11:52 am

The kids and I have memberships to Bowers Museum and Kidseum. A few Saturdays ago we decided to go do Native American Sand Art at the Kidseum, it was cool! I wished I had brought my camera, but I was still on my reflective, weblog hiatus. The kids got painted on by a face painting lady, but they all wanted their paintings on their arms … ? Go figure (Dadda is a tattoo artist, in case you don’t know). Jonny got a snake, June got vines and flowers, and Aveline got a horse. The Kidseum was cool, the kids found things of interest there that I easily would have overlooked, which kinda goes to show that they know what they’re doing at that place. I tend to be the one loving museum kids’ stuff more than anyone in the family, so it was super refreshing to see them get into the exhibits (which are all hands-on, yay!) for long periods of time. Their favorite area was the dress up area. There is a floor to ceiling, wall to wall mirror and hats, from cloches to sombreros, shoes, from Asian platform flip flops to high-button boots, dresses, tunics, caftans, in all sizes, I was so impressed at the array of cultures and time periods represented in those fun clothes. I couldn’t help myself from trying some on and fantasizing about stealing them! See how sad it is to go on a reflective, weblog hiatus? I would love to have shared pictures of the fashion going on that day. Well Miss Aveline Mae found a skirt that she did not want to part with, the display it brought out of her was beautiful to behold, dancing, twirling, I could tell she felt that skirt. So what could a sewing mother do but offer to try to make her one of her very own? Stay quiet is a good option, I suppose. Incidentally, it was a circle skirt, I hadn’t sewn one before. Here is how it turned out, she styled the photo completely, she even went and got me my camera, since I was having a good conversation with my visiting friend.

The fabric is from Japan, Rei and Hata from Inkrat always bring me amazing gifts, since I am the wife of Hori Shido (Sid’s Japanese tattoo master title). One time I asked for fabric and received more than I’ll ever use, unless I make more circle skirts! I’m happy to say that Miss Aveline Mae loves the skirt, which isn’t always the case when I am trying to recreate something she has her own ideas about. I’m not sure she feels the same in it as she did in the one in the museum, but who knows what history and magic is lurking in that one’s fibers, surely I cannot recreate that.

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Dates with the big kids

August 12, 2011 – 3:45 pm

The big kids and I have been going on solo dates the last three Mondays. Even though we’re together 24/7, we are ALL together 24/7, so one on one time has to be planned out. I just loved my dates! It’s wonderful to connect with each child without the influence of the others around, and without the demands of the baby also. I got to see each child independently, observe their traits, laugh with them, get silly, eat at their favorite restaurants and just enjoy them. Reflecting on each date now I realize that my worries about things that I think I might see going awry with the development of their personalities or my relationship with them, are unfounded. They are wonderful people who I’m sure will lead good enough, happy enough lives, and well, that’s my dream for them.

We ate at Ruby’s and Jonny ordered macaroni and cheese with fries dipped in ranch.

He also got a red gum ball, which meant he won a free root beer float, but since they were out of coupons for those, they gave him a coupon for a free shake. He was stoked. We came to Ruby’s from Target where he picked out a Transformers lunch box (for when he starts his classes), and checked out cameras (he let me look at clothes a little, too :) ).

Ave chose to eat at Wahoo’s, her fave is the rice and beans. I wish I had more pics, but she was taking video and I still don’t know how to put videos on here! Ugh. We went thrift store shopping on our date, too. She got a really cool brass candlestick holder to walk around the house in the dark with.

Junie chose Wahoo’s for our date also. I wised up by this date and took more photos of our time together. Except I forgot to bring my camera into our favorite pet store, Wagon Train, in Orange, where we went before Wahoo’s. Junie met a little friend there and they hung out in the chicken coop together. June’s favorite animal was a Maltese/Chihuahua puppy, she wanted her so bad. Me? I want a sweet, black lamb they have there. I love him.

Doesn’t every kid prefer to stand up while they eat? I specifically remember feeling really perturbed that my parents made me sit down in my chair at dinner time. I wanted to stand next to my chair, I guess June takes after me in that regard.

Candy Crane, oh yeah! She won and shared some Tootsie Rolls with me.

Don’t think she stopped firing to turn and smile for the camera!

A bit about each child, currently (-or- the stuff we’ll love to read in the future):

Jonny is seriously considering not having a family when he’s an adult, rather he’ll work in the video gaming industry, live in a small, inexpensive apartment and have all of his free time to enjoy his various gadgets, iPod, XBOX, iMac, laptop, etc. I do not discourage this prospect, that sounds like good livin’, Jonny style! He loves the Diary of a Wimpy Kid books and he’s currently on the second one.

Aveline is feeling her personal style evolving, she especially wants to try out a more “rock and roll” style. She’s not sure it’ll suit her, but she is drawn to try things from that genre, such as chains draped along the hips of her jeans. I can’t wait to see what she thinks of it! She’s really into building with legos and even erector set parts. She’s trying to brainstorm ways to make money both to buy things she wants, and to donate to save the dolphins that are being slaughtered in Japan, we watched The Cove together and she was very heartbroken. And she likes blue everything!

June‘s dance moves continue to develop. We had Backspin on xm on in the car, and I couldn’t believe the moves she busted out! They were so original, she was obviously feeling the beat. Some of her moves were reminiscent of popular break dancing moves. I told her she might want to pay attention to the idea that God might have given her the gift and talent of dancing and he just might want her to share it with the world!

Indy loves the ceiling fan in our bedroom, we point to it and then make circle motions with our pointing finger and say, “Round and round and round …” He moves the pitch of his voice up and down to imitate how we say it. At the beach, he crawled away from me and into our sun shelter tent. He spied me through the tent window and started excitedly bobbing up and down on his knees and scream-laughing to get my attention and show me where he was!! He also loves to wave bye-bye now and just today did kisses with his little lips for the first time, ahhhh!

See that!

In case you don’t know, all of this is good livin’, Jennifer style! I do like doing other things, but my kids are, hands down, my favorite thing, ever.

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Stankovits Vacation 2011, day 1 – Randsburg

June 12, 2011 – 12:24 pm

Even though I’m still in the midst of my weblogger identity/existential crisis (It’s called bless my birth, but it’s time for me to leave my own birthing season behind. So, why am I here? Who am I writing to/for? And for what reason?), and an even worse, sucky keyboard crisis (at least it can’t get ruined from crumbs or liquids, the snack cabinet is directly above the computer desk), I am nonetheless going to share our recent vacation, with pictures and entries from my vacation journal. Onward ho.

May 12, 2011
We are in Ridgecrest, in the parking lot of the Walmart, haha. I like when country folk call their Walmart *the* Walmart, and I feel a little like country folk whenever we’re out of Orange County. It’s early morning, 8-ish and we’re all up, dressed, coffee-ed and fed! I slept amazingly well and awoke with Indy around 5:30. Sid is trying to figure out what’s wrong with our rig. It lost so much oomph going uphill yesterday, maxing out at 38 mph with the pedal to the metal (petal to the meddle? ha). [We have since had the motorhome fixed, it was the resignator, and to my understanding the resignator is what manages the turbo booster.]

Yesterday we explored the Yellow Aster Mine in Randsburg. It was an active mine from the 1890s to around 1933. It was so excessively cool! Sid was best at identifying what the different parts of the machinery and structures were and did. He was most impressed by a super, crazy-deep mine shaft. There were wooden frames every two feet or so, they looked as if they were holding the shaft open, all the way down and there was a very tall building built around the opening. And I’m almost certain this was the Yellow Aster Mine, like 99.99999%, but I’m so used to everything at a site like this being gated, fenced, managed, regulated and with signs everywhere that I do feel that 0.00001% doubt. In our ghost town books the mine in Randsburg was the Yellow Aster Mine (look what I just found!!), so you decide. We really liked that it isn’t managed by any parks or historical societies, it was amazing seeing things as they were, touching them, walking dangerously close to, and even into, them.

The whole mine area was incredibly spooky, various strange noises constantly made our heads turn, eyes search and minds puzzle as to their origins. The wind literally moaned as it rushed over the hills, through the ruins and around us, casting our hair wildly about. There were these certain desert plants up there with skinny components arranged like geometric sculptures. Some of them were still green, others were dry and woody, well the woody ones rubbed and clicked loudly in the rushing wind, like gypsies clinking their coins, demanding acknowledgement of their presence. It was hard not to feel unwanted up there, like someone didn’t want us there. That feeling made us want to leave and stay. So interesting. I’ve never been to a place like that before.

A lovely wildflower meadow, where? you ask . . . Why, in between the Outdoor World parking lot and the freeway, of course.

Outdoor World

"It's comin' right for us!"

That's a tent-cot full of cute

Avie Oakley

The mine outhouse, so cute

Oh, chute!

I wanted a better picture down in, but I was scared to get any closer. Next time I'll take the time to summon my courage

The view up from the crazy-deep shaft

This is inside the stamp mill building, apparently, since I didn't know what was what, I didn't actually photograph the stamps, they were just around the corner, behind that cabinet on the left, darn. This mine had a 100 stamp mill, according to our books, but I don't see how 100 stamps could fit over there. Later in our trip you'll see a pic of a cool 3 stamp mill. Anyhow, the stamps crush the ore and the debris goes down, while the gold ends up on those ramp thingies

check this out……………………………. and this

There's June and me

I love this pic!! Think that sign coulda had anything to do with those feelings I was having, about someone not wanting us there?

The miners used that car to transport the gold . . . just kidding. This site brought the Dr. Destructo out in Jonny =)

It has curb appeal, love the wrap-around porch

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catch up, the sequel

May 22, 2011 – 4:29 pm

Here’s more of the last few months for us.

Indy against the sky

Ave made her Belle into a mermaid queen with clay

I thought this thingy was pretty

The girls got a new bed and rug, which is meant to resemble a meadow (Ave's idea)

I made egg salad on my homemade bread, oh yum

Ave photographed her train from the top . . .

. . . And from the front

Intense breadmaking sesh

The hammock went up

My Kirsten from when I was little, was sent to the American Girl Doll Hospital for some minor maintenance (they said she's in exceptional condition for being an original with a white body =) Thanks Mom!)

Easter egg hunt

And I can’t believe we don’t have any pics yet of the 2 yr old ferret we adopted! She’s so sweet and fun-loving and non-biting. And we’ve got snap peas, pole beans, squash, blackberries ans strawberries thriving in the garden.

I think that about covers it.

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Prayer for Japan

March 20, 2011 – 11:06 am

Every week we have some friends come over and play. Us moms organize some type of craft or activity to do while we’re together and this last week we decided to make a strand of Tibetan prayer flags in prayer for the people suffering in Japan. I had a Tibetan Prayer Flag Pack, which I bought from Montessori Resource a couple of years ago and hadn’t used. It came with two strands of prayer flags, one printed with a traditional Tibetan design featuring a horse, which is said to carry the prayers on the wind (pictured above), and one strand of blank flags for us to add our own prayers to. It came with pens, too. I read the little book it came with so that I could briefly (accommodating hyper-friends-are-here! attention spans) explain what the flags were all about.
This was our setup:

It’s so cool that what we choose to pray for, using this medium, can be expressed in different ways. It has expanded my view of prayer, because I don’t ever draw my prayers. (Maybe you can see why, haha! This one’s mine.)

Even if it doesn’t have an appealing aesthetic quality, it’s nice to be relieved of the task of finding the words to match my heart’s cry. The other way that this activity expanded my prayer life, is that the colors of the flags catch my eye often throughout the day – since I can see them through windows from inside the house, as well as when I’m outside – and when they do I can’t help but pay attention to God and my heart connects to Him, and to those suffering in Japan.

Here are the kids working on expressing their prayers.

And here are those precious prayers, expressed. We encouraged them to include any prayers on their hearts.

Us moms sat down to the table after the kids had gone off to their playing, and we filled in the blanks with scripture and prayers of our own.

I’d like to suggest, if you feel led to do this in your own home, that you could easily make this project from fabric scraps, staples and ribbon or string. And any permanent markers will work well on the fabric squares. Google image has plenty of beautiful photos of the flags to inspire you. There was one picture that I printed out to show the kids, in which there was just a multitude of flags, and I was happy to share with the kids that the people of Tibet often pray for peace for every inhabitant of the earth, so one of the flags in the picture might have represented a prayer for us!

By the time we got around to hanging our flags, our friends were gone.

I hope that this will become a tradition in our home (it’s up to me and I won’t make any promises) that when tragedy strikes in the world, in our community, in our family, or in our home, that we will assemble a strand of flags in honor of those affected by such a tragedy. That we will make it a habit of connecting to the suffering of others.

And so now our prayers hang outside, carried by the wind and reminding us to keep praying. Tibetans let their prayer flags go to tatters outside, reminding us of the impermanence of things. When they are all worn out they are said to have done their job.

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