Happiness Happens

This week has been a stressful. You know the kind of week that is so rough you find yourself standing in the kitchen at midnight with a spoon in your hand looking for something to plunge that spoon into? Hopefully it’s not just me who does this…

And as generally seems to be the case with such weeks, somewhere towards the end or maybe it was the middle of the week, my body responded to this increased stress level by inevitably succumbing to a 24 hour bug. My husband and children being the truly lovely people they are, are always willing to do what needs to be done around our home. So on this particular night my 7 year old daughter Rebekah said that she would put her baby sister Anneliese to sleep. This is no easy task, but I figured it wouldn’t hurt to let her try. After 20 minutes I crept into the room my 2 littlest girls share and saw this.

My heart instantly filled with love, gratitude and happiness as I quietly knelt by the side of my daughters’ bed and touched their sweet sleeping faces. For me, there is magic to be found in moments like this. I think that throughout my life I have learned more from those simple and perhaps what might even be considered mundane moments like this. Because the simplicity and beauty of those moments aren’t ones that require a lot to manufacture, they are spontaneous, wonderful and unexpected.

Last night I was invited to speak at a gathering for the women of my church. One of the points I talked about was being happy. I truly believe that happiness is a choice, because sometimes it is just so very easy to get busy with the grind of daily living that we forget to truly embrace it. But it is there for us. Sometimes it is the big moments in our lives and sometimes it is not. Happiness can also happen in the warm and genuine smile a child gives you or the feel of the cool wind on your face or a smell that transports us back to a different time and place.

I don’t think there is a magical equation for happiness, but I can tell you that when I live my life with a grateful heart it just seems that I am much more able to find happiness abundantly present.

Recently for me, happiness happened when I received a sweet note from one of my children that left me trying very stoically not to belly laugh in her face as she patiently waited for me to read it…. well take a look at this note and see for yourself why it is funny. To my credit, I told my daughter what a beautiful picture it was, hung it on the wall and only laughed after she was gone. That was hard folks! Now her note is on my wall in a place of honor and brings me happiness every time I look at it.

I guess it doesn’t take very much to make me happy. Or maybe it is that I just want to live a life full of happy memories and so I am always seeking out those mental snapshots that I can collect and bring out for a day that I need a little boost of happy. Because those kinds of days happen, but as the chapters unfold in my life I want each chapter to be full of as much of the good as I can cram into them. Because our stories change, adding layer upon layer of happiness, understanding and experience as we go.

As a child I spent much time every summer trying to perfect my mermaid moves or performing highly advanced science experiments in order to determine just how much time you had to spend in the water before your skin became “pruney”. Now as a parent, it brings me great happiness to see how much my children also love to swim, perfect mermaid moves and perform their own highly advanced water related science experiments. And of course, capturing happy-cheesy moments like this of my children on film are just the icing on the proverbial cake.

Other happy moments for me have been watching my little princess waddle around this summer in her tutu swimsuit. Seeing her brings a smile to my face. I think I bought it exactly for that reason and couldn’t help but smile when she saw her new swimsuit for the first time and proclaimed it to be”fancy”. I credit her older sister for teaching her that word.

Yesterday something else happy happened. I arrived home to find a very special package waiting on my doorstep.

I felt like a kid on Christmas morning and could hardly wait for my children to come home from school to open the box with me! Do you want to see what happiness looks like? Well then take a look at some of these pictures!

Oh decisions, decisions…

With August officially being “Happiness Happens” month, thank you Shari’s Berries for inspiring such a happy memory for my children and myself. Happiness does indeed happen and I am going to continue to choose to take and embrace every minute of happy I can.