Happiness Is…{dancing and dandelion seeds}

May 17, 2012 By Leave a Comment

Last weekend I had the pleasure of attending my ten-year-old niece’s dance recital.  JDubbs was at a concert so I brought the kids and we headed to the auditorium ready for some fun.

Em wore her tutu for the occasion.

It was so exciting not only to watch my niece perform, but to watch Em’s enchantment at all the older girls in their costumes up on the stage.  She sat in awe for three dances and then wanted to head onstage herself.  I literally had to chase her down the aisle and pick her up kicking and fighting to be let down so she could join in the performance.

After that we took a break and headed outside with my sister Jessie to give the kids a chance to stretch their legs.  We didn’t go far before a patch of dandelions caught their attention and we spent quite a while casting dandelion seeds to the wind.

Now my kids gather bouquets of them wherever we go.

Then back inside to see my niece perform 4 of her 5 dances.  I was so glad to be able to be there for her–even though we’re not too far away, our schedules often conflict with my sisters’ kids’ events.  I was so happy to be able to be there and for my kids to be there to share in her excitement, too.

Fun with family, enjoying our days.  Life is good.

So, what’s good with you?  Come join the fun at the Happiness Is… blog hop!

The Happiness Is… blog hop is simply a place to come, link up a post (not your homepage!) that made you happy recently (anything but a giveaway or review) and share it with the rest of us!  Photos, recipes, crafts, stories, moments, and anecdotes are all welcome!  Come peruse other amazing posts and meet fantastic new people in the blogosphere!  The only rule is to please grab my button (right sidebar) and link back to me in some way, otherwise you won’t be able to link up.  That way more people will come and learn about this uplifting way to promote your blog!

So, are you ready?  On your mark, get set, hop!



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You Are My Sunshine

May 14, 2012 By 2 Comments

My darling Em is the sunshine of my life, and so I decided she needed a birthday party to celebrate how she warms our hearts.

The printables were gorgeous and added a nice touch to the table along with our You Are My Sunshine book.  I found some yellow galvanized buckets at the dollar store, which I filled with sun-like goodies (yellow Oreos and peanut butter cups) and a bunch of mini origami stars I bought from Etsy.

I served lemonade out of a spigot into mason jars I got at the local hardware store.  We liked them so much that we use them for drinking all the time now!

All those decorations plus some golden doilies from the party store for sun decorations on the windows, streamers, balloons, fresh flowers, lots of family and one birthday girl added up to a pretty glorious way to celebrate!

Em had a ball.  She absolutely loved her party outfit, the decorations, the gift bags, and being around her family.

But as I’ve told you before, she does have her moments.  And baby girl can pout with the best of ‘em.

Oh, life is hard when you’re two!

Nothing a little birthday cake–with a Cinderella candle–can’t fix!

What a blessed day.

And afterward, everyone unwound by playing games, hanging out, and Miss Em could not be torn away from her new Rapunzel doll and her golden hair.

Well, she could, but only to try to put Rapunzel’s shoes on Daddy’s feet.

And her own.

Happy Birthday to my delightful little Em!  You may be a handful sometimes, but we love you and your spirited ways.  Thank you for being our sunshine!

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Happiness Is…{big cousins}

May 3, 2012 By 10 Comments

My ten-year-old niece Erika and nearly twelve-year-old nephew Christian came up for Em’s birthday festivities last weekend.  I had a chance to take a small trip alone with them in the car, and to take a walk with them and my kids one afternoon.  I’m happy to report that after some much-needed quality time, of course this auntie loves those two more than ever.

And so do my kids.

It was a simple pleasure: I merely sat on the ground with my camera and watched the fun unfold.  First, they each searched for the perfect rock and then began a classic game of hopscotch.  I captured the camaraderie and enjoyed the dynamics between two adolescents and their Mini-Me’s.

I’m not sure why I didn’t get as many photos of my niece since she is just a big a ham as her brother, but she must have been feeling a bit more mature that day, or my attention was focused on my three-year-old wielding a rock.  Anyway, even with the age difference, I sure am grateful that my kids have such amazing big cousins to look up to and play with as often as we can!

So that’s my happiness this week.  How about you?  What simple things made your heart smile lately?  Come share them at the Happiness Is…blog hop!

The Happiness Is… blog hop is simply a place to come, link up a post (not your homepage!) that made you happy recently (anything but a giveaway or review) and share it with the rest of us!  Photos, recipes, crafts, stories, moments, and anecdotes are all welcome!  Come peruse other amazing posts and meet fantastic new people in the blogosphere!  The only rule is to please grab my button (right sidebar) and link back to me in some way, otherwise you won’t be able to link up.  That way more people will come and learn about this uplifting way to promote your blog!

So, are you ready?  On your mark, get set, hop!



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Happiness Is…{malls and carousels}

April 12, 2012 By 13 Comments

Do you remember when a mall was just a regular old building with a lot of shops?  I remember loitering there, being a regular old mall rat, with very limited options as to how to spend the time.  Window shop, try clothes on, maybe buy something, flirt with boys, call my parents from a pay phone, repeat.  Now malls are actually pretty with seating areas and so many dining options, gardens and ice skating rinks and even a carousel!

Now, I grew up in a town with a mall.  My children have not.  The nearest mall is 45 minutes away and it it barely deserves its shopping center status.  Think more Kmart and less Nordstrom.  I am not such a hillbilly that I lose my mind every time I see a Target, but give me a few years and I just might reach that status.  I admit I do try to find a Target every time I venture toward Civilization, but malls are rare for us.  My kids, on the other hand, think malls are incredibly fascinating and wondrous places to explore.  Window displays in American Eagle are playgrounds.  Escalators are better than Christmas morning.  But having a real live merry-go-round right there in the food court?  Their heads just about exploded.

So of course, we went on.  All four of us.  It was really fun and sweet and it made me really happy.  One of the better things about having your kids grow up–they start to love the same things you did as a kid.  And they only fought about which horse to ride for ten seconds.

These were their faces before the ride started:

And these are their photos during:

Hilarious!  Joy and fear all wrapped into one.

Then we wandered around the mall, did some summer shopping for the kids, went on a couple of those 25 cent rides and spent 45 minutes in the Disney store.  The best part?  We left the land of Lightning McQueen and Disney princesses without buying a thing and the kids didn’t make a peep.  I think they get so overstimulated in there with commercial overload that they can’t even think straight.  Or maybe they think it’s a museum or something.  It’s not that we wouldn’t buy them something if they really wanted it–they don’t ask.  Seriously.  Sometimes I think living in Vermont is the best thing ever could have done for these kids.  They don’t even know how to pitch a fit in a store yet.  The operative word being YET.

And just when it couldn’t get any better, JDubbs made some excuse to go run and buy me a shirt I had admired but didn’t think was in the budget to buy.  He handed it to me and said, “Happy Monday.”  Now if that isn’t happiness, I don’t know what is!

What about you and yours?  Do you dread malls, avoid them like the plague, or do they still make you happy like a teenager with extra babysitting money in your pocket?  Come share your thoughts and posts here, at the Happiness Is blog hop!

The Happiness Is… blog hop is simply a place to come, link up a post (not your homepage!) that made you happy recently (anything but a giveaway or review) and share it with the rest of us!  Photos, recipes, crafts, stories, moments, and anecdotes are all welcome!  Come peruse other amazing posts and meet fantastic new people in the blogosphere!  The only rule is to please grab my button (right sidebar) and link back to me in some way, otherwise you won’t be able to link up.  That way more people will come and learn about this uplifting way to promote your blog!

So, are you ready?  On your mark, get set, hop!

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Easter, IPhone-style

April 11, 2012 By 2 Comments

You can’t imagine my dismay when we were about 20 minutes from my parents’ home in Massachusetts and I realized JDubbs we left my DSLR camera at home.  I had planned on having a photo shoot of the kids in their Easter finery, had even brought props, and all I was left with was my IPhone.  Now I know there are people who are shooting masterpieces with their phones, but I am not one of them.  My images come out blurry and as much as I love Instagram, the whole process is time consuming.  But the alternative–not having any photos of our weekend together at all–was out of the question, so I put my photography skills to the test and attempted to capture the fun and festivities of a weekend with my family plus lots of sugar.  We’ll see what you think of the results.

Saturday we went to my sister’s new house to have an epic Easter egg hunt–we hid 89 eggs for 4 kids!–and celebrate my Dad’s birthday.  My niece and nephew are 10 and almost 12, so although there is a big age difference, these four are so in love with each other.  It was sweet to watch.

It definitely wasn’t as warm as the older kids’ clothing would leave you to believe, but it was so nice to play outside.

Then we headed in to dye eggs and have cake for Grampy.  The kids were as patient as under four-year-olds get; needless to say, there was a bit of frosting-stealing, but all in the name of avoiding meltdowns.

This is my favorite photo of the weekend.  Cousin love.

Then we parted ways with the older kids to head home and get the kids down so that the Easter Bunny could come and spread his chocolatey joy.  We run a very meager Easter ship–a couple of small toys and some carrots made of Reese’s pieces.  Although going to church wasn’t on our agenda this year, it will be once the kids are a bit older, so I am hoping to keep this holiday more religious than commercial.  I hope I can keep that spirit in mind every year.

On Easter morning we had to literally wrangle the kids to take a photo together that I could send to JDubbs’s family.  In the end, JDubbs himself just grabbed them, put them on his lap and held them there until I got a shot that wasn’t totally blurry.  It still is a little crazy, but my dreams of an Easter photo shoot were long gone at this point.

Don’t worry–Em will wear that dress again for her birthday photo shoot later this month.  It’s too beautiful to wear only once!

Then we headed to the hall we rented in the community where my uncles’ live, and celebrated with my extended family.  My younger sister organized a craft for the kids, we listened to the Red Sox game and kept tabs on the Masters while JDubbs and my mom cooked a gorgeous ham dinner.  Everyone had a lot of fun, and the food was so good!

It was lovely to spend time with my little family as well as my great big family, too!  Even if we didn’t get a chance to focus more on the religious side of this holiday, I was grateful to be able to spend time with family and celebrate the season.  We made some wonderful memories and shared a lot of laughs.

 Happy holidays everyone!  I hope you had as much fun as we did!

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Happiness Is…{celebrating}

February 23, 2012 By 6 Comments

Half the reason I took this week off is because my beautiful niece Erika turned ten on Valentine’s Day and I promised her her first visit to a salon to get a real haircut.

Oh and to get some colored streaks in her hair!

Isn’t she awesome?  I never could have pulled that off in fourth grade.  Or now, for that matter!  We had a lot of fun–can’t wait until we live closer to my family in a few years.

So I won’t talk long because I’m not even supposed to be here, remember?  It’s not about me, it’s about you.  What’s making you happy this week?

The Happiness Is… blog hop is simply a place to come, link up a post (not your homepage!) that made you happy recently (anything but a giveaway or review) and share it with the rest of us!  Photos, recipes, crafts, stories, moments, and anecdotes are all welcome!  Come peruse other amazing posts and meet fantastic new people in the blogosphere!  The only rule is to please grab my button (right sidebar) and link back to me in some way, otherwise you won’t be able to link up.  That way more people will come and learn about this uplifting way to promote your blog!

Also, I will try to link back to my favorite post of the week on Twitter and Facebook every Monday after the link closes.  It could be you!  And don’t forget to peruse past favorite links in my Happiness Is Blog Hop tab above.  If you’re featured, your link will be up there forever!  I can’t promise it’ll happen every week, but I appreciate all of you taking the time to be here.  I hope all of you make the time to pop around and enjoy each other’s posts–it’s no fun if you link and run!

So, are you ready?  On your mark, get set, hop!



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Moments

January 18, 2012 By 4 Comments

January is a big month for JDubbs at work, so I’ve been happily using that as an excuse to spend time with my family.  It’s especially delightful since I wasn’t able to see them all around the holidays, so we’re making up for lost time.

Here are a few special moments from last weekend when my sister and her boyfriend, Chris, came up to visit.  They are rock star visitors: up early with the kids, entertaining all day, and super fun to hang out with after the kids go to bed.  Plus they reminded us how to play Spades, something I can see happening more often in these parts.

They came bearing the world’s most exciting and static-inducing toy, as well as some fabulous fairy wings for Miss Em.  Needless to say, she needs little in the way of fairy wing persuasion.

Neither does my sister, really.  We did a good job choosing Em’s godmother, I think.

Jax got to hang out with one of his favorite people, Uncle Chris, who is incredibly patient and fun.  Jax’s favorite kind of person.

When they left on Monday, Jax and Em stood out on the deck, wrapped in a blanket, to watch them go.  Jax turned to me and said, “Why do they have to go?  I really like them.”

I know, buddy.  We do, too!

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