Adventurous Mom

Archive for the ‘Determination’ Category

“How do you do it all Maken­zie?  You must be so busy!!”

I hear this all the time when I encounter peo­ple.  Work­ing on two busi­nesses from home, tak­ing care of my hus­band (whom I might add is recov­er­ing quite nicely and doing a great job at this point of tak­ing care of him­self!), and shut­tling the kids to and from school.  Home­work, base­ball, play dates, lunches, din­ner etc…!

It doesn’t really seem that over­whelm­ing when I am going through my day–well most days.

A LifeHacker’s Views on Time Management

It all starts with my morn­ing, I am not a morn­ing per­son typ­i­cally, so I “roll” out of bed around 0730, pray­ing that my hus­band has been able to make his way to the kitchen before me to put on my morn­ing “heaven” (aka cof­fee.)  Morn­ing really sets the tone for the rest of the day for me.  This is the part of the day that I have to really be present, to focus my ener­gies, to align with the stars, to regain my Chi.…and ALL of it!  Because if I ALLOW my morn­ing to go bad, then quite fre­quently I have a hard time get­ting in front of my day.

The con­cept of Time is a funny one to me, because some days just seem to go by so quickly and some are a mean­ing­less mess and drag out for­ever!  Yet, Time always Feels in my favor, when I have a chance to get my energy AHEAD of TIME.  Makes sense or no?  If I can be present in the NOW, slow down my “reac­tion speeds” and work on my “proac­tion” speed, then it seems like Time is on my side.  ProAc­tiv­ity vs. ReActivity

Of course part of this proac­tion speed is defin­ing my day! I define my day on sev­eral levels.

1. How do I want to FEEL today? What do I want my energy to be like?  Do I want to be a pissed off, angry mom?  Or do I want to be a happy, joy­ful, peace­ful, fun mom?  (I choose the lat­ter because it is more fun!)
2. What do I want to DO today? And for some this seems like a ridicu­lous ques­tion because you HAVE to do so many things.  So let me point you back to the idea of Proac­tion…  When you choose to do some­thing, you allow your­self to feel proac­tive, it’s your choice, it’s your deci­sion! Yay!  When you feel that you HAVE to do some­thing, you’re react­ing to out­side influence…and well 99.999% of the time you’re the only one that can make the choice for YOU!!  So are you being respon­si­ble for your choice, or are you giv­ing up your power of choice?  Think on this for a lit­tle while.…
3. What do I want to BE? This can be such a broad state­ment, but often I chose to be inspired, to be fun, to be happy!!  I also chose to BE a MOM, to be an Entre­pre­neur, to be a Run­ner.…  I get to choose these things every­day!  What do you choose?

A few sim­ple steps to align your Mind with Clar­ity and good energy will allow you to get ahead of TIME!

(PS — I also do this trick, that was rec­om­mended by Zig Ziglar that on days when I roll out of bed and feel just cruddy, I jump up and down 10 times, laugh and say “This is the best day of my life!” “This is the best day of my life!”.…then I look in the mir­ror and say “I’m talk­ing to you–turn that frown upside down!”  It is so ridicu­lous, but it’s a fan­tas­tic pat­tern inter­rupt!  Works!!)

I don’t know if you rec­og­nize that a lot of my posts are about get­ting your MIND and your ENERGY in the right spot.  Lit­tle of it has to do with how much time or effort I put into cer­tain tasks.  I used to be that very task focused-driven person.…but it didn’t work for me, I was a mis­er­able mess!  So I had to try some­thing dif­fer­ent.  Focus­ing on my thoughts before focus­ing on my actions was the BIGGEST dif­fer­ence.  IT works…no bull­shit here!

Two more “No Bull­shit” Life­Hacker Tips:

The best Wheat Bread on this Side of the Mississippi:

This is the EASIEST bread recipe I have found.  You have to do it 2 or 3 times until you find the rou­tine, and you will be ask­ing why you spend so much on bread at the store!!

1. 1 cup warm water
2. 1 Table­spoon Milk
3. 2 Table­spoons oil
4. 3 Table­spoons Honey (I usu­ally add more!)
5. 2 Table­spoons Brown Sugar ( I some­times sub­sti­tute Molasses)
6. 1 tea­spoon Salt
7. 1–1/2 cups all-purpose flour
8. 1–1/2 cups whole wheat flour
9. 2 tea­spoons instant active dry yeast.

1. Com­bine Ingre­di­ents #1-#6 in a large mix­ing bowl, stir.

2. Add flours and yeast, and knead (turn on the kitchenaid mixer) for 10–15 min­utes.  Dough should be smooth and elas­tic.  Place dough in a greased bowl, turn­ing once to grease top.  Cover with plas­tic wrap, let rise in warm area (usu­ally above the refridger­a­tor or oven works well.)

3. Punch down dough; knead for a few min­utes until smooth then form into a loaf.  Place in a greased loaf pan and cover.  Let rise again until dou­bled, about 30 min.

4. Bake at 350 for 30–25 min­utes.  Remove when done and allow to rest in pan just for a few min­utes (any longer and it starts to sweat!)  Easy peasy!  Enjoy!

HOMEWORK!!

I don’t know about you, but my biggest bat­tle with home­work is try­ing to just get it done!!  How many times have I asked him?  Is it done yet?  Finally I was exas­per­ated by my attempts to fin­ish it the night before it was due (for us, it’s a Wednes­day!) and I thought, well, I will do what many com­pa­nies do when they want the job done ahead of schedule…factor in BONUSES!!

So his home­work sched­ule looks like this:

Home­work comes home on Fri­day due on Thursday.

If it’s com­plete by Mon­day — $3 bonus.…

If it’s com­plete by Tues­day — $2 bonus.…

If it’s com­plete by Wednes­day $0!!!

Why $0 on Wednes­day? The goal was to get him to com­plete his home­work before crunch time, so now he’s self-motivated to com­plete his home­work on Mon­day or Tues­day.  He doesn’t have to do it over the week­end, and he gets to choose when he wants to do it.  Either choice has an impact, but it’s ulti­mately his choice!!

Thanks to all of my read­ers who so gra­ciously fol­low along with my posts!  You inspire me every­day to make great posts!  Feel free to drop me a line and make com­ments!!  Many Adven­tures to You! ~Makenzie

I have recently been observ­ing some folks that are resist­ing change…and isn’t it funny how the thing that we most WANT in life can elude us, until we give up the WANTING altogether?

I am sure many peo­ple have done the same thing.  As soon as they give up the NEED to have some­thing a cer­tain way, then life all of a sud­den gets eas­ier and they get the thing they were look­ing for.  In fact, it usu­ally just falls into their lap with­out hav­ing to try.  It’s the ol’ “A watched pot doesn’t boil!”

You can also say that it’s, HOLDING on TOO TIGHT!  And when I was dis­cussing this exact resis­tance to change over lunch with my hus­band, imme­di­ately my very favorite movie came to mind, Top Gun.  The rea­son why the pro­tag­o­nist, Mav­er­ick ever got the oppor­tu­nity to train as a fighter pilot was because his pre­de­ces­sor, Cougar, resigned as a fighter pilot after an intense exchange with a Russ­ian Mig Fighter.

The res­ig­na­tion went like this, “I’m hold­ing on too tight Mav­er­ick, I’ve lost the Edge!” He turned in his wings and resigned as a pilot.

What really hap­pened to Cougar is that became attached to the out­come.  He wanted to con­trol the out­come, which for him meant, he didn’t want to die in a com­bat exchange (well, most peo­ple wouldn’t, but fighter pilots train to elim­i­nate that fear alto­gether!!)  That very fear and desire to con­trol the out­come changed his abil­ity to be an effec­tive Top Gun pilot. For any effec­tive fighter pilot, you must fly on instinct and be able to TRUST your­self, there is no time for thought or con­trol.  You can­not even fathom the out­come, once you do, you have lost the edge, you no longer fly on split sec­ond instinct and you can’t FEEL your intuition.

The same is true for entre­pre­neurs.  You are skill­ful at what you are doing. You decided to become an entre­pre­neur for some rea­son, and that rea­son is that you are GOOD, no, you are GREAT at what you do.  Becom­ing a skill­ful entre­pre­neur is sim­i­lar to how fighter pilots train.  They train, and make mistakes.…correct their mis­takes, and train more.  And Repeat.

Effec­tive entre­pre­neurs do the same thing! Try, mis­take, cor­rect, repeat!

No fighter pilot on their first run will ever be per­fect, it’s IMPOSSIBLE!  As will being an effec­tive entre­pre­neur, you will not be per­fect your first week, IMPOSSIBLE (or ever for that mat­ter, so stop try­ing!)  Trust me, I fell on my face so many times as a new entre­pre­neur,  its amaz­ing that I didn’t need plas­tic surgery to put my nose back in place!  It takes train­ing, try­ing and mis­tak­ing to refine your skill.

Let me repeat…you must make mis­takes! Every nor­mal and effec­tive entre­pre­neur does!  (Phew, so glad I am normal!)

And when it comes to the hold­ing on too tight, we see that a lot with entre­pre­neurs and their fear around money.  They now all of a sud­den dis­con­nect from their intu­ition and instinct and start want­ing to con­trol the out­come!  They must not be try­ing hard enough, they must do more, they must be failing…and on and on… Such a com­mon story!!

And like a fighter pilot, you, as an entre­pre­neur have cer­tain intrin­sic abil­i­ties to go with the flow.  When you set your inten­tions, fol­low your intu­ition, and TRUST that your actions will be guided with­out too much thought, there is the magic flow.   It is the same flow that the pilots feel when they are at the top of their game.  Lit­tle con­trol is needed, it feels almost effortless.

Mal­com Glad­well wrote a whole book on this sub­ject of trust­ing your intu­ition called “Blink”.  He writes, “…I hope that by the end of this book, you will believe it as well — that the task of mak­ing sense of our­selves and our behav­ior requires that we acknowl­edge there can be as much value in the blink of an eye as in months of ratio­nal analysis.”

So, my ques­tion to you, whether you’re an entre­pre­neur, a  “non-preneur”, or a fighter pilot:  What are you hold­ing on to so tightly that causes you to lose your edge?

I’d love to hear!  And if you’re curi­ous at all about how I help peo­ple find and KEEP their EDGE, visit my page about Suc­cess Coach­ing Or just visit me any­way just to say hi!!  I love company!

Many Adven­tures to You!!

Maken­zie

When other peo­ples opin­ions are toxic…turn your ears off.

Even the most con­fi­dent peo­ple have bad days, and let other people’s opin­ions influ­ence their confidence.

This post  is for you and for me. For those who are tire­lessly dri­ven to achieve, those that have decided to Design their Life to their desires, those striv­ing for finan­cial free­dom, those who see them­selves as pros­per­ous before they actu­ally have the money in their hand. Writ­ten for those that travel the world instead of climb­ing the cor­po­rate lad­der, those that chose to teach their chil­dren at home instead of in a more tra­di­tional method, and every­one else who pur­pose­fully walks to the beat of a dif­fer­ent drum, I intend this for you.

When I first decided to retire, I was very fear­ful of telling my clos­est friends  because I was sure they would not under­stand (so instead I cre­ated a blog and posted it to the rest of the world — anonymity is eas­ier.) Five years ago, these same friends were rolling their eyes when I told them that we were start­ing an ambu­lance com­pany, “How do you even DO that? You can OWN ambu­lances? I mean don’t HOSPITALS own ambu­lances?” and on, and on.

We were ridiculed by some and told that we were lucky if it lasted a year.  Well, we decided that lis­ten­ing to this so-called advice wouldn’t get us to where we wanted to be.  We would have to forge our own path, and we did.  We watch sev­eral other com­pa­nies crum­ble around us, but we set our eyes on the goal, and maintained.

We worked so hard for that com­pany, and those same peo­ple were now singing our praises.  Isn’t is funny how demen­tia devel­ops so eas­ily in Naysay­ers? So, I was fear­ful of telling those peo­ple that I have decided to retire, take a step back, and let go of the salary. But when I did  some rolled their eyes and shook their head, they couldn’t under­stand. But also I found many were amaz­ingly sup­port­ive.  I stand here know­ing I made the right deci­sion, and the naysay­ers opin­ions haven’t killed me, and they haven’t made me decide to change my decision.

Selec­tive Hearing

Tak­ing a page out of my mother’s book, I decided that the best thing to do in this case, when lis­ten­ing to the pes­simists, was to develop selec­tive hear­ing. I may or may not choose to lis­ten to what they have to say, but even if I do, I don’t have to heed their advice.  Or Like Ash­ley Ambirge says from The Mid­dle Fin­ger Project, “No one’s opin­ion mat­ters unless you let it matter. ”

I have found that it helps to think about what  their moti­va­tion is for telling me that I may not suc­ceed.  When you’re aware of their per­spec­tive, you may not be so angry, you may feel sorry for them.

1. They have not been around suc­cess­ful peo­ple and can­not fathom that any­one could be successful.
2. They are fear­ful of your suc­cess because it will reflect poorly on their per­ceived abil­ity that they aren’t successful.
3. They have had dif­fi­cult expe­ri­ences (whether they are suc­cess­ful now or not) and are try­ing to “pro­tect” you from dif­fi­cult experiences.
4. Change is dif­fi­cult for them, so they assume it must be dif­fi­cult for you too.

Your Life is Not Their Story

Your life is YOUR story, and while you some­times care and want approval from those around you, if you have pas­sion toward achiev­ing great­ness and suc­cess, or want to change your life, you MUST write your OWN story! Might you fail? You might. Might you make wrong deci­sions? You likely will.  But since this is your story, you have to gather the expe­ri­ences, cre­ate your road map and try.

So Stand UP! Push your shoul­ders back, take a deep breath and for­get about what they say.  Besides, your best offense is to prove them wrong, so get to it!

Many Adven­tures to You~

Maken­zie

I con­sider myself and adven­turer, a life adventurer.

There is also the tra­di­tional sense of the word Adven­turer, like when you think of Mag­el­lan, or Colum­bus. There are Adven­tur­ers such as Richard Bran­son or the late Steve Fos­sett who thought mak­ing money was an adven­ture, and also push­ing their pos­si­bil­i­ties to the limit.

Are you any dif­fer­ent than any of these peo­ple?  Are you made of the same chem­i­cal com­po­si­tion as these peo­ple? Seri­ously, when you were born, is it pos­si­ble that you were born just a REGULAR human, and they were born SUPER human?  No.  You were born with the same pos­si­bil­i­ties as they were.

What makes them suc­cess­ful and oth­ers just mediocre?

There are many dif­fer­ent the­o­ries about what makes peo­ple excel into this  Out­lier cat­e­gory.  Some think its envi­ron­ment, some think it’s DNA, oth­ers say it’s just luck.  One com­mon­al­ity I can say for cer­tain is their abil­ity to cre­ate men­tal tough­ness, pos­i­tive self-talk and incred­i­ble self confidence.

You may not aspire to become a Mag­el­lan of the 21st cen­tury, but per­haps, you want to adven­ture into a new career, cre­ate a busi­ness, or have the guts to do what­ever it is that you want?  What is keep­ing you from achiev­ing your goals?  I can almost guar­an­tee that it is not the exter­nal cir­cum­stances sur­round­ing your sit­u­a­tion.  It’s prob­a­bly what you tell your­self when you talk to yourself.

Become Men­tally Tough

What does it really take to become men­tally tough and cre­ate your own self con­fi­dence?  One great exam­ple that I love to use is Mil­i­tary Boot Camp.  (But Maken­zie, seri­ously, boot camp?  I can’t even do a push up!)  Imag­ine the out-of-shape, skinny, or chubby kids that enter boot camp.  They’re scared, they have lit­tle or low self esteem, and are timid when they enter boot camp.  But over the course of sev­eral months, a tran­si­tion occurs in their body AND their mind.  Not only are they strong, but they are con­fi­dent and men­tally tough.

How did this happen?

1. They were sub­ject to “sug­ges­tions” day and night by drill instructors
2. They were immersed in suc­cess talk (learn to do this, oth­er­wise you will be killed!)
3. Their bod­ies were trans­formed by day after day phys­i­cal training
4. Many small suc­cesses led to build­ing confidence
5. Prac­tice, prac­tice, practice

This didn’t occur overnight.

Men­tal tough­ness for you won’t occur overnight, but you can believe that you can become tough, strong willed, and con­fi­dent.  It really begins with the first step of “belief”.  Unless you are will­ing to sub­ject your­self to a boot-camp type immer­sion, you will need to set a reg­i­men for your­self to Prac­tice Self Confidence.

Prac­tice Self Confidence

Much like boot camp, you will need to prac­tice your reg­i­men.  This is what I suggest:

1. Real­ize that you are born with no dif­fer­ent abil­i­ties than peo­ple that are great and achieve success
2. Decide what goals you want to achieve
3. Rec­og­nize when say neg­a­tive things to your­self (this is pos­si­bly the hard­est part because only you will rec­og­nize this, no one can do it for you.…but again, it take PRACTICE!!!)
4. Elim­i­nate the word: CAN’T
5. Replace the neg­a­tive beliefs with pos­i­tive beliefs:  “I CAN” or “I WILL” inter­nal statements
6. Don’t give up, keep try­ing, keep practicing.…you can do it!
7. Prac­tice and repeat

Good luck, and happy adventures!

Part II of “I don’t know what I want to be when I grow up!” we explore find­ing your niche…or what really inspires you.

[I write this for one of my very tal­ented friends that could do almost any­thing but she is strug­gling with find­ing that “niche”. ]

Inevitably I was fooled by think­ing that when one grad­u­ates col­lege, or even high school, that the fairy-career-mother strikes you over the head with what you are des­tined to be for the rest of your life.  This has never hap­pened to me, and from my dis­cus­sions with all of my 20–50 year old  peers, this is not the case for them either.

Don’t Always Fol­low the Leaders

My dad has worked at AT&T for his entire career.  He is the excep­tion not the rule.  My mom on the other hand has worked in quite pos­si­bly every indus­try there is: Amway, Real Estate, UPS, Finance Bro­ker­age, even Taco Bell.  There may not be just ONE right career or busi­ness for your, but maybe several.

Minds change, soci­eties change and so do economies.  Think­ing that you will be in one career or busi­ness for the rest of your life may lead to per­pet­ual dis­ap­point­ment.  Your career or your busi­ness might some­day be extinct is another possibility.

In the early 1900’s, the type­writer man­u­fac­tur­ers and busi­nesses were liv­ing high on their prof­its.  Lit­tle did they know that just a few decades later, the basic word proces­sors would become extrav­a­gantly pop­u­lar.  Oh but that’s just a fad! Or so they thought.

The need for telegrams – extinct as the tele­phones and faxes became more preva­lent.  Med­ical tran­scrip­tion­ists? Maybe soon to be extinct as voice tran­scrip­tion tech­nol­ogy is improving.

Don’t get stuck on one idea as the end-all-be-all.  Be as flex­i­ble as the kelp in the ocean, flow­ing with the tide…and ready to break free and catch the wave to the shore.

I want to stress that, it is impor­tant to be adapt­able, and adjust to the cur­rent mar­ket.   It doesn’t mean you won’t be doing what you love; just keep your eyes open for the oppor­tu­ni­ties instead of stuck on ONE idea.

Be Like  a Blackberry

As Wal­lace D. Wat­tles explains in his book “The Sci­ence of Get­ting Rich” ,  you must pro­vide more in use value than you receive in Cash value.  Is the niche that you are look­ing at get­ting into going to pro­vide more to your employer or your cus­tomers than maybe you receive in cash?

At first I thought his think­ing was back­ward, “Um hello?  I need to get paid too!”  But it is a very sim­ple philosophy.

I like to take for exam­ple my Black­berry.  I paid $100 for my black­berry plus a monthly fee.  I could argue that my black­berry is worth many times that amount because the use value that I receive is far greater than the actual value.  I can’t count how many times I have been able to close a deal, or keep big dis­as­ters from occur­ring because I had my lit­tle infor­ma­tion por­tal attached to my hip.  So my thought is that the black­berry is worth far more than the $100 and the monthly fee that I pay for the service.

Ask your­self, what skills or knowl­edge do I have that is worth value?  Is my employer or my cus­tomer in need of the value that I can pro­vide them?  What am I really good at doing?

Phone a Friend

Every­one knows the old adage about opinions….everyone has one?  Yet, lis­ten intently on what your friends, cowork­ers, or fam­i­lies are say­ing about your tal­ents.  Are you great at bak­ing?  Are you great at strate­giz­ing? Can you sell ice to Eskimos?

The les­son here is that, although YOU may think you know what you are good at; it is dif­fi­cult to stand and view your own tal­ents from third person.

If you are truly try­ing to find your niche, maybe this is a good time to get oth­ers involved and seek feed­back regard­ing your tal­ents.  It could be as easy as send­ing out a sim­ple sur­vey ask­ing oth­ers to answer what they think are your tal­ents.  Don’t for­get to offer to buy them cof­fee for com­plet­ing it!

Find­ing your niche is a process that con­sid­ers the exter­nal envi­ron­ment and your inter­nal tal­ents.  With the right effort and some help from oth­ers, you may be on the right path to com­ing up with your Dream Life!

At the age of 4 I remem­ber wak­ing up in a hos­pi­tal room barely able to talk in an oxy­gen tent, and tap­ping on the tent to my mom.  I was scared, I didn’t under­stand what was going on, and I couldn’t talk.  It wasn’t until years later that I found out I had epigloti­tis, a rare but fatal child­hood viral con­di­tion that causes the flap that cov­ers your air­way to swell up until it occludes the airway. 

I only sur­vived because my mom heard the stri­dorous breath­ing in my bed­room and took me to the ER imme­di­ately. Per­haps this expe­ri­ence has shaped my life of need for con­stant adven­ture….  Per­haps it is the DNA that is ingrained in me. 

Let me back up a lit­tle bit more…This blog is about moms, let me intro­duce you to my mom. My mother was born poor in a small town in Mis­sis­sippi, a white girl on the wrong side of the tracks.  My mother’s father was a train oper­a­tor and engi­neer, a hard life of work, but that was just his day job, his pas­sion was with motor­cy­cles, fly­ing acro­batic air­craft and boot-legging alco­hol into the dry state of Mis­sis­sippi.  Nor­ton was known to do such dan­ger­ous motor­cy­cle tricks as head­stands on the seat while the motor­cy­cle was in motion.  He lived life on the edge, and raised my mother to do the same. 

At 14, he gave her a birth­day gift…her first motor­cy­cle.  She was arrested by the Merid­ian police because at 14, she didn’t know what a driver’s license WAS, much less pos­sess one.

So at the ten­der age of 18, my mother met a hand­some Navy man, mar­ried and fled the small town in Mis­sis­sippi, never to look back.  Kids were not in her sights, she wanted to live her adven­ture, out of the con­fines of the rigid south­ern tra­di­tions.  In fact, mar­ring a man like my dad was some­what taboo since he was  “Span­ish” and dark skinned.  (She con­fessed to me later in life that she knew he was Mexican/Filipino, but had to tell her dad he was Spanish).

A move to Cal­i­for­nia and over 7 years of mar­riage, my mom decided to try her hand at moth­er­ing.  She had never held a baby before my older sis­ter was born.  But why not go all the way?  Three daugh­ters under 5 years old, all within 18 months apart! My mom is the def­i­n­i­tion of adven­ture. My mom sur­vived the tor­tur­ous baby crazi­ness, and things got bet­ter for her when we were able to walk and talk. 

Adven­tures with my mom were com­mon­place.  I often tell sto­ries of my mom cre­at­ing cir­cuses in our back­yard, com­plete with uni­cy­cles, tightropes, and tram­po­lines.  We would blast music from the record player into the back­yard to prac­tice our cir­cus rou­tines.  Then there was the “urban farm” that wasn’t really a farm, but rather the crow­ing rooster.  I don’t know what obsessed her to get a rooster in our neigh­bor­hood, but need­less to say the neigh­bors weren’t pleased!

My mom wanted to raise us to be inde­pen­dent, strong, pur­pose­ful women.  She even says she  gave us strong “mas­cu­line” names: Casey, Maken­zie and Abbey (okay, well, Abbey skirted the mas­cu­line name, although her mid­dle name is Michael, after my dad since Abbey was really his last attempt for a boy.  Abbey hated it for years, but now I think she’s at peace with it.)

Even the sim­ple bike ride wasn’t nor­mal in our house.  Before we could ride bikes, my mom fig­ured out a way to load us all on her bicy­cle.  Abbey was strapped to her back in a back­pack, I was on the rear child bicy­cle seat, and Casey sat on a home-made seat across the mid­dle bar. (Note that in this pic­ture, Casey grad­u­ated to a reg­u­lar bicy­cle, so it was just me and Abbey on the bike.)  Imag­ine the looks my mom got!  Child bicy­cle trail­ers were not invented then, so she wasn’t let­ting hav­ing kids stop her from going on a bike ride!! 

As I learned how to ride, we fre­quently did 10 and 12 mile rides at the age of 9 down the muddy rocky shores of the San Fran­cisco Bay, with her scream­ing at us the whole way. We didn’t have a choice to quit, she wasn’t car­ry­ing us home! Not only did my mom instill the legacy of adven­ture into us, but she taught us that ANYTHING IS POSSIBLE!  She was unwill­ing to take no for an answer, and she didn’t stop her life because of kids…we were just extra par­tic­i­pants along for the adven­tur­ous ride!