Happy Day 9

Happy moment of the day #1  I went to a wonderful brunch today to celebrate an amazing lady's 40th birthday.  We went to this really fun Asian inspired restaurant and had some of the most beautiful food!  My friend Jinkee loves creative food and is never short on ideas of where to eat...one of the many reasons I am so happy to call her my friend!
Happy moment two was interesting.  I have been thinking about my grandfather so much today and yesterday.  He died Aug 30th, 1993.  He was my good friend.  I was only 12 at the time but he was one of the best people in this world.  His exemplary life has always made me want to do my very best.  I think he would be proud of the woman I am today.  Throughout my life, not all of the time but often enough, I have thought "what would my Grampa think of me doing...."  I hope he is happy with who I am...miss you Grampa.

It is a funny thing about thinking about the past.  I was at dinner tonight and I ran into my high school counselor.  She said she remembered me! Who knows for sure, but I told her thank you and that I have a Master's Degree.  How many high school counselors get to find out what their students are doing years later?  It was nice to be able to tell her "thank you" and put a smile on her face.  I know I often wonder what some of my patients and clients that I worked with many years ago are doing today.  So it was a good day with nice remembering thoughts and happy times with friends.  Until tomorrow!

When the peaceful happy moments roll....day 8

SO tired tonight but happy!  I was able to help some people at the Family History Library tonight.  I volunteer there one night a week and most of the time I am able to do a lot of family history research on my own family.  It is so fun and I LOVE that I have traced David's family back to the 1200's on many family lines!  It is also fun that he is a descendant of so much royalty!  I found a King of England on one of his lines tonight!  Just THINK of ancestor day at school for the kids!

I am also happy because Joel's Occupational Therapist told me that he has really improved.  Any parent with a child with ANY disability is happy to hear that there is improvement in their difficulties.  Joel has it rough sometimes in this world.  I would give anything some days to make loud noises less scary and new situations less frustrating for him.  All I can do is get him the help he needs and DO MY PART as his parent.  If I could tell you parents out there ONE thing, as a speech-language pathologist, it is not my job to cure your kiddos, it is my job to give them the tools, 2x a week for 30 minutes, to improve.  It is YOUR job to help me by doing what I ask.  Any therapist will tell you a helpful parent can do amazing things for their kiddos.  (Ok getting off my soap box now :p )  A happy therapy moment for me today was hearing Connor say "kitty" for the first time.  I tell ya that kid is going to do me in with his mellow yellow attitude on life!  I am a type A mommy with a type B son.  Gonna try to remember to enjoy him not being able to talk...someday I know I WILL look back and laugh at how badly I wanted words to flow out of his mouth!
Well, off to bed.  Looking forward to tomorrow's sunshine!

Yipee Day 7!

First, I am so happy I did a happy blog for 7 days! True, I combined day 1-3 but still, if I am going to do this for 365 days the first seven down is not bad!  Writing this early today because I am giddy with excitement and happy to share it with (people who read this?) well my blog lol.  Today we started out our morning at the pool. Joel, Connor, and I had it all to ourselves and was so wonderful to see how far Joel has come in a summer!  He can jump in a pool and swim from one end to the other! He dives down and grabs rings at the bottom of the pool.  The thing I am the MOST happy about, though, is that he LOVES to swim! It was a rough couple of summers there with more tears to dry than swimsuits!  Connor is turning into a little fish as well and make me help him JUMP into the pool for as long as my one arm could stand it.  Again ROCK ON left arm!  Happy children moments I hope sear into my memory forever...just too precious to want to forget!

Second happy moment: I am happy because today is my FIRST day back to work in 2 years!  I took a YEAR off and it sort of turned into two.  I had one job interview this summer, but two days before I went in, I broke my arm.  Do you believe in destiny?  I sure do!  This job is walking distance to my home, a private practice which means I don't have to deal with any extra school teacher's besides Joel's, and I work for a total of 2.5 hours each time!  It is a happy job! I am happy to be helping to pay off all of our...ok to be honest MY medical bills.  Finally, with taking this job I get to help people improve and is there anything better than that?  I made a sort of vow after I finished grad school that I would not go through 7 years of school to work for a little bit and not do it just because I had children.  I didn't know what I could do after having two because I truly loved being HOME and catching the moments I missed with Joel.  This job was meant for me, to help me keep my promise to never quit working with people, and let's me be a mom to my kids all at the same time.  I am happy someone up there is watching out for me!  So hi ho hi ho, off to work I go...and on that happy note.......

Day 6 Hope for Change

Lots of family drama this week folks....LOTS of family drama.  I feel pulled this way and that, BUT I had some happy moments that I am going to hold on to.  First, I am so beyond proud of my husband I can't stand it!  He has shown more grace and love than anyone I have ever known.  I am so proud of that M-A-N-N!  Hoping for the best in his efforts with his family, just thinking happy thoughts!
Second...let me just say that saying "sorry" to me goes a LOOOOOONG way. I have had two extraordinary experiences this summer with forgiveness and I am happy to say each time brought me peace and happiness to me and my family.  Thus far in my life there is nothing that I have not forgiven.  I would like to think that is an amazing feat.  It brings happy tears to my eyes to feel the healing power of forgivness move through me and I hope that there is nothing in my future that I cannot overcome.
Last happy thought of our Sunday.  I am currently the ward chorister, meaning I lead all of the songs (I get to pick them too and SO happy about that!) for our congregation.  I was able to conduct all four songs with ONE arm today! My other arm is currently out of commission until the doc sees more bone growth...that would make me happy! But ROCK ON left arm!  So goodnight all...happy dreaming!  

Day 5

Hey all,
Today I find myself looking back on the day and trying to find happy moments that stick out.  It wasn't a bad day, just a day that went by without little consequence.  So here are my happy moments for the day 1) I had a family member tell me they love me. I loved hearing it because we don't say that too much in my family, we love one another, but it doesn't come out much with my extended family so it was a nice moment!  2) Joel and I paid a visit to our neighbors because he wanted to visit their doggies.  He proceeded to bypass the dogs and go straight to our neighbor's video games.  It is cute to see a kid explain, in a very grown up manner, how downloading and gaming works.  That for sure put a smile on my face.  I love that kid!
So there it is for tonight.  Happy thoughts to all.

Day 4 Happiness is......

When I was in high school we sang this song in our concert choir at Disneyland called "Happiness is" the line starts out "Happiness is (then fill in a cute sentence like 3 kinds of ice cream, reading a book, and other fun things lol)  I am learning that happiness is a variety of things and just the term "Happiness" has a huge variety of levels!
Take Day 3 for example, my son's birthday.  I was so overwhelmed with happiness that my son had made it to the seccond year of his life and that we had such amazing family and neighbors who came to share in his little celebration.  But then I was happy last night just putting him to bed and watching him sleep peacefully in his crib.  It was a quiet, peaceful kind of happiness that comes from seeing those little eyelashes flutter with dreams.

Day 4 brought me two new happiness moments that carry different definitions.
First we start by our trip to Target today.  Now, for men I don't know, but for us women there is just something very special about shopping at that place!  It is like a mall, grocery store, pet store, pharmacy, all rolled into this really neat package. It also has a wonderful symbol that any woman can recognize and our heart does a little retail therapy skip of joy over! Retail therapy happiness...and happy to have my son's back to school list mostly done...relief!
Tonight I was able to go out with David and enjoy an adult meal.  My definition of an "adult meal" is one that takes place with me not having to look away from my adult dinner companion every few minutes and say "just a second" AND my meal comes to the table and I am able to cut IT up and eat it without blowing on it or reheating!  A different kind of happy from shopping today, but not sure what kind of definition to place on it; how about "parental happiness"
Well I am off to get comfy for the night and watch a little Burn Notice....eye candy happiness perhaps?  Be happy friends and enjoy every level of happiness life has to over you tonight!

Days 1-3 The saying becomes an idea, which became a blog!

Hello all and welcome to my new blog!
Now, this blog is going to start out a bit sad, but you can't have the sad and depressing without the idea of the happy, so here it all is!  This summer sucked!  This was, by far, the worst summer I have ever had in my entire life.  It was as if a dark cloud was hanging over me and my family and trying to outrun it was impossible!  For starters, I flew off of a horse and broke my arm (May 7th) great way to kick off our summertime fun! A surgery followed the day after my son's fifth birthday party while my husband was away on business in Florida. Then on June 7th, our Golden Retriever we had acquired and spent a small fortune on was hit by a car and died within a matter of minutes in my arms.  The fun was just getting started folks!  As we tried to escape our pain and suffering on a week's trip to Utah, two visits to the Urgent Care ensued (one for Connor with a double eye and ear infection that HAD to look worse than it felt....I hope, and one for me for a second bout of tonsillitis).  Following our fun trip I went for a visit to an ENT (Otolaryngologist for my speech therapy friends reading this) where the doctor informed me he was "pretty sure" due to the size and shape of my tonsils that not only did I have tonsillitis, again, but that I most likely had lymphoma and would need to have my tonsils removed and biopsied for the results.  That pretty much brings us up to speed...there are some other stressful moments that are still beyond my comprehension or ability to express, but that should be enough for now to move on to my reasons for "Happy Challenge" don't ya think?

My sweet friend Jennifer told me three days ago that I deserved 365 days of happiness and that it started that day.  I thought a lot about that and tried to make each day a good day, then they became GOOD days.  Day one, ran into my friend Jennifer twice in one day, happy because we don't see one another that often during the week and I had just come back from the beach and visiting my parents (all happy things)
Day 2: I spent the entire day with just one son since David and Joel were away in New Mexico.  It was fun getting to know Connor and our trip to Toys R Us was magical.  Then we went to lunch and had Sushi with my dad (ALWAYS a yummy time) and ended our pre-nap time with some Krispy Kreme doughnuts!  My night ended with some wonderful ladies and some fabulous stories at a Mom's night out hosted by a lady I became friends with through Joel's school this year.  Spinach and cheese ravioli with Alfredo sauce....need I say more??
Day 3: Here we are on day three and I thought I would have forgotten about this whole 365 day happy thing.  But it really stuck with me!  What if I could actually do this?  What if I could BE happy for 365 days?  True, it is a great challenge (especially with having all of the above still fresh in our memories) but I don't have to be psycho happy, what if I could just find that moment each day that I can hold on to when the rest of the day looks like it is all going down hill?  Maybe I could toss all of that negative depressing energy out the window and cling to good things.  I say it is worth a try!  So here I go friends!  I am going to post, for the next 362 days my Happy Challenge.  May it inspire YOU to become happy, to find some new things in life to do, or to just read my attempt at happiness and get a REALLY good laugh....that would make me happy.

A pic of me and Jazz just one month before our accident: