Tag Archives: alberta

happiness

Dueling Christmas carols

We started to put up Christmas in the house today. This was accompanied by Christmas carols played and sang loudly. My all time favourite is Mary’s Boy Child, and the boy’s is O Christmas Tree. So we each played ours at top volume and sang out hearts out.

I realized as I was putting up our advent calendar how many wonderful Christmas traditions we have. Most of our away years we came home for the holidays, so most of our traditions are rooted here at the ranch already. Tomorrow we will get our lights up, soon we will get our tree, Christmas music will play until Boxing Day.

I found a photo taken maybe 5 or 6 years ago – my kids are standing in front of our house here and they look like it’s their home. Except it would still be quite a few years before we returned home. None of us ever thought we would be living in this house we have come to love so dearly.

How funny is that. It’s like they were practicing for years to come. Home sweet home. This place has been a safe haven on our road to happiness.

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Compassionate healer

We have the best family doctor, we found her by chance and she’s not close to where we live, but I am so grateful she’s our doctor. She knows us all so well and is so caring and compassionate every time we go to see her. It makes us feel safe, cared for, and listened to.

The girl had to go see our doctor today and as usual it was such a positive experience. She expressed some teenage concerns and the doctor listened, not just listened but heard and was fully present in the moment. She made my girl feel important, cared for, and loved. That is a real gift. It’s happiness.

A bonus happiness moment is that we were feeling well enough today we could finally go visit mom again. It’s been a week since I got this cold/flu thing going on and I wasn’t able to go in and see her. Talk about an amazing lady with so much courage and strength.

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Today they curled

Today we went to small town Alberta and the kids participated in a very Canadian activity – they went curling. Somehow I have never curled before, but it sure looked like they were all having a lot of fun. Turns out this is an unexpected bonus of the kids joining 4H is they get to do cool things like this.

It was good to get out and laugh and have a little bit of fun. Happiness.

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Good sport

My boy got cut during basketball tryouts today. He was devastated but even as he was telling me (and I was sad and upset) he squared his shoulders and said but the coach asked me to be manager. I won’t play but I’ll still go to all the games and help out.

That boy. I am so proud of him. He took his sad situation and turned it around. He will make a great manager for the team.

Proud mama happiness moment.

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Happiness blogs

I started this blog almost 3 years ago on my 44th birthday. I was still in the beginning stages of working my way out of my dark night of the soul years (sometimes I feel like I’m still at the beginning, but I’m not). I began with the idea that I would do 44 days of happiness – my goal was that every day I would have to find something that made me happy and I would write about it. Sometimes those happiness moments were really hard to find at the beginning, I think I wrote a lot about Henry the Heron who I used to see every morning on my walk. I remember many times the day being over and me realizing I still hadn’t had a moment of happiness and making sure I did something right away so I could say I had done one thing that had brought me some joy.

I think now about how small and unhappy my life was then. I mean really, in the last 3 years my entire life has imploded, gone sideways, blown up, and been shaken like I live inside a snowglobe and still I have found moments of happiness every day. Thank God I trained myself to look for them or I would have been having a right pity party.

My life now still is pretty uncertain, full of bumps, and honestly I have no idea what I’m doing – but it’s so much happier. We are home, we are safe, we are free. Those are big words. It has helped me incredibly to have a check in every day and find something to be grateful for, something that made me happy, to express gratitude.

This morning I found an email from feedspot.com saying they had chosen my blog as one of their top 75 happiness blogs – I am number 64. Look it up here

Seriously how cool is that?

I even got a little award to put on my blog – that was a smile filled moment of happiness.

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Look around

I have spent the last week really humbled by the amount of love and compassion I have seen in the people around me.

If you are able to stop and look around – really look into the souls of the people you walk by – are they living with love or living with fear? I’ve spent a lot of time recently with people who are in fearful situations and yet they are pouring love out of their souls. It is a beautiful thing and it is happiness.

And as an extra moment of happiness, I get to look into this face, these eyes, every single day. How blessed am I?

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The Christmas List

I got a massive text on my phone earlier this evening – a wish list from my daughter for Christmas. Proof that she is stuck in the years between, not quite a young adult, no longer a child. Makeup, hair accessories, earrings are on the list – but so are Lego, stuffies, and chocolate. I love it – grow up but stay a child my love.

She came into my room and sat beside me and giggled her way through her list. Christmas music is now allowed in our house (the kids put on the time ban not I).

It was just such a beautiful, normal moment. And that is where happiness is found, inside the small everyday things. It’s love, it’s happiness.

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That November 15 thing 

There are days that come where the last thing I want to do is find a moment of happiness. Sometimes it feels like things just plain suck, but this is exactly why I do this blog – it’s to remind me that every moment has the potential for happiness. Some moments are greater than others, but there is happiness, peace, love, joy to be found in every moment.

Today would have been Dad’s 77th birthday. I still can’t believe he’s gone, I still want to run over and tell him things when they happen, I look for him when I need advice, I just miss him. He really was quite an exceptional man.

When I look back on my childhood I think the greatest gift I had was the gift of unconditional love. I never once doubted that no matter what I did, how badly I screwed up, what disaster I found myself in, or what amazing things I had to celebrate that my parents loved me and were behind me completely. I didn’t realize what a rare gift that was – to me it was just how life was.

I mean sure, there were those years in my teens when they became totally irrational, but besides that they were pretty amazing parents.

So much is changing right now I can’t catch my breath. I need to sit in the moment and yet I don’t want to. But I will.

My happiness moment today is remembering and celebrating my dad, loving and holding space with my mom, and being so incredibly grateful that I have my sister to walk this path with.

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A little tenderness

I was in the parking lot today and I watched an elderly man push his wife to the car in her wheel chair. She dropped something and he stopped and walked around searching for the item and then handed it back. Then he helped her out of her chair and into their car.

The tenderness this couple had towards each other made my heart smile. There are two options I figure – to live life guided by fear or to live life guided by love. I could feel the love flowing off this old couple. That was happiness.

In the middle of chaos and uncertainty there are people who react with love and tenderness. I aspire to be one of those people.

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Jump back on 

Today seemed like as good a day as any to face my fears. Given that I feel like my world is in an upside down shit storm and all. 

After exactly 16 weeks I got back on my naughty horse and went for a ride. 

If that sounds easy, it wasn’t. I brought him into the corral and tacked him up.  This was much easier than the last time I sat on him on September 30. Then I barely had any mobility and I just sat on his back for a couple of minutes   

The next part turned out to be much harder than I anticipated. It took me almost a half hour of standing beside him before I found the courage to climb back on. Remember he’s been off since I turfed myself the end of July – he had some energy. 

But I finally did. And as we walked we both relaxed a little bit. And I faced a fear. It reminded me I am strong enough to walk the scary paths. 

Oh this horse. He is happiness. Scary happiness but happiness. 

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