Things that make me smile...

I was walking (running) through the store on Saturday trying to grab several things in a short period of time, and I realized I was frowning. I made a mental note to stop frowning and put a pleasant expression on my face. Done. Check. Move on to the next item on the list. Minutes later, I was standing at the checkout and a little old lady in front of me turned around, took one look at me and then smiled - I realized I had been frowning again! It was so nice to be smiled at by a complete stranger, and I thought 'I'm going to start doing that'.

Of course, I'm going to have to conquer the frowning thing first!

So here are a few things that have made me smile lately :)

1) I was in church last Sunday, and all of a sudden a toddler up the back let out an infectious peel of laughter. I love that! It made me want to laugh out loud too. The sound of a really little child laughing is wonderful.

2) I was driving down the street on Saturday, and I saw a car on the side of the road that was piled HIGH with tree branches. I guess they'd been doing yard work. I turned back to look at the car when I'd passed it, and from the back, it just looked like a giant ball of tree with wheels :) That made me smile.

3) My family make me laugh. For Jonny's birthday the other week, Jessima (Jonny's wife and the world's best sister-in-law) and Abby had set up a bunch of games for us to play. My favourite was 'Sardines in the Dark'. It's that reverse hide and go seek game, where one person hides and everyone else looks for them, and then, when you find them, you hide with them. Anyway, we decided to play it in the dark (because we'd had so much fun playing Murder in the Dark minutes before). Micky had hidden (he was just sitting in the corner of the kitchen, but we didn't know that). Anyway, on our way into the family room, Jonny fell over onto the floor, and then about 5 or 6 of us who were following immediately behind him, all felt him on the floor, and thought we'd found Micky, so we excitedly plonked ourselves right down on top of him! We sat there laughing our heads off (not so silently), and then we started laughing even louder when someone finally said 'Is micky even here?!' We had to turn the light on to prove that we were all sitting there for no reason :) Good times.

4) Reading comments on my blog makes me smile. Especially from my oh-so-competitive siblings who are eager to win the 'international competition'.

5) Our backyard makes me smile. It's so green - I love it. On Saturday it was really windy - I LOVE the wind - and it was rainy (my FAVOURITE weather). I was very happy looking out the kitchen window at it, and I even wandered outside to enjoy it.

6) I was driving home from work on Friday night listening to a radio show that's hosted by two very funny guys. They were up to their latest antics, and I suddenly realized I was sitting in the middle of not-going-anywhere traffic, laughing my head off in the car by myself. That made me happy :)

7) Watching home movies of Reuben make me happy. My favourite to date, though, has been the running around a band-aid video :)

8) Remembering my holiday to Perth with Jenny makes me smile. We had such a wonderful time. Jenny, remind me to send you a copy of an article I read in the Readers Digest the other day, about a women and her friend who went to a day spa but didn't know 'what to do' and did everything wrong - it was totally us!

9) Watching my Mum laugh about silly, silly things when she's really really tired, makes me laugh a lot :)

See? Lots of reasons to not be frowning in the grocery store! I'll work on it ;)

xo Tammy