A List of Happiness

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I’ve gotten a lot of positive feedback from my “A Happy Life” post last week (if you missed it, you can read it here).  I love when my blog strikes a chord with people, and I love it even more when they take the time to let me know their thoughts.

One person in particular really touched my heart.  Remember my Auntie Carol?  I’ve written about her before, and about the special role she plays in my life.  Well, she lives on a farm in rural Eastern Alberta, just outside of the teensy town where I was born.  I spent much of my childhood time on her farm, and it’s the setting of some of my fondest memories.

Following my post, she sent me a list of the things that make her happy.  This list was something she’d been working on for a few weeks she said, scribbled on a notepad by the computer.  Just jotting down happiness thoughts, not for a blog or for Facebook, or for an article….. just for herself.  She shared her list with me, and has given me permission to share it with you.  You see, our lives are thousands of miles apart and our day-to-day activities could not be more different, but what struck me about her list was the simplicity of it. b7081851e49a47b24ce844f4ed3cfa84

“Yes,” I thought, as I read it.  I nodded along to every point.  I think it’s the simple things in life that bring joy to all of us.

Here’s her list.  I hope it inspires you to make one of your own:

  • The awesome song of meadowlarks
  • ‘Explores’ in the coulee with the grandchildren
  • The tickle in my finger from a newborn calf’s suckle
  • Eating fresh peas from the vine
  • Tobogganing in the coulee
  • Watching the kids jumping bales with the dog
  • Friends stopping in for coffee
  • The taste of raspberries off the bush
  • Canada Geese flying low over the house
  • Baby calves running around in the corrall in the evenings
  • Watching the kids slipping and sliding down the slope of the lawn
  • Enjoying the spring bouquet of crocuses that my husband picks for me
  • Playing ‘hide and seek’ on 4-wheelers with the grandkids
  • Kids helping me make homemade pizza
  • Fresh corn on the cob
  • Coffee and cold drinks on the deck with my daughter-in-laws
  • Hauling bales on a beautiful October afternoon
  • Decorating cookies in ‘Grandma’s kitchen’
  • The peace and tranquility of my 6am gardening
  • Trips to the pasture at Sounding Lake
  • The wonder of fresh rows popping up in the garden
  • I feel so Lucky and Blessed to be living in my beautiful ‘little corner of the world’!!

Me too, Auntie Carol, me too.

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Sometimes.

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I’ve been in Washington, DC, for the last three days, visiting my best friend Sarah.  We have been friends for twenty-five years now, through thick and thin, and she’s just had her second baby boy.  I travelled to DC solo, to have a few uninterrupted days to get to know him and to catch up with her.  

This is what I learned:

Friendships, true friendships, survive distance and time.  

They survive cross-country moves, broken hearts, the pressures of grad school, and the stress of new jobs. They survive marriages and babies and practices and renovations.  They pick up where they left off whenever and wherever an opportunity presents.

And that’s what we’ve done.  For twelve years together and thirteen years apart, we’ve laughed and cried and laughed some more.  

This weekend, we talked about how we never imagined our futures like this. Our teenage minds could never have dreamt of these busy, loving, fulfilled lives we live, and they certainly didn’t dream of raising our babies five hundred miles and a country apart.  Yet, here we are. So although we can’t have dinner together on Sunday nights or see our kids play in the backyard as a pack of four, we can do these things sometimes.  Some is better than none, and once-in-awhile beats never.

So, sometimes, it will be.

  

The Gift of Experience

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My son is turning seven this week.  I wrote a post about him two years ago, on the eve of his 5th birthday.  Now five seems like a distant memory, and I have a seven-year-old full-blown boy on my hands.  If you’ve got a child in your life, you will understand the disbelief I’m feeling that another year has flown by.  Time speeds up exponentially when you’ve measure it through the growth of children.

We hemmed and hawed about what to get him.  With Christmas just past, hand-me-downs from older cousins, and the blessing of a comfortable life, there isn’t much that he actually needs.  And while I do think that birthdays are a chance to venture beyond the “need” category and into the “wants,” I felt the unease of excess creeping in.  My heart lies in minimalism and I didn’t feel good about buying more “stuff” just to checkmark a box on the birthday to-do list.  So we did what we often do; we got him a gift of experience.

We surprised him with tickets to Monster Jam in Toronto and dinner at a restaurant afterwards.  Our Sunday was spent with two very excited children, riding the GO train, enjoying the monster truck action, and having a special birthday dinner.  The four of us were together the entire day, adding to our memory banks and learning more about what makes our children so very special, so very unique, so very much our most precious gifts.  We will remember this birthday.  And he will too.

Happy birthday to the kid that’s changed my everything.

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