TopTen Tuesday

There are so many things I would love to blog about. Several posts are already half written in my head. But today, I'm going to make it simple.

Top Ten Little Things In Life That Make Me Happy!

10) Watching the huge snowflakes fall outside and knowing that I am in for the day!

9) Songs that you hear that make you say "That's exactly how I feel!"

8) Birth stories. I just love to hear mom's tell about the day their little ones were born! I'm sappy that way. (Except of course when you're listening to a mom who seems to still be lacking a maternal instinct even though her child is 4 years old and she talks all about the wretched pain and her begging for drug after drug because nothing worked, not even the epidural, and how it was the most excruciating 3 days of her life and she's still pretty bitter about it. And then she adds that she will never have another baby and all you can think is "Praise God!" Okay, that was exaggerated a bit, but only because I met this woman in the Penny's baby section 10 years ago so her exact words are not fresh in my mind...but her bitterness is!)

7) Waking up in the night to someone whispering "Mommy." (When they're yelling "Mommy" in the night, well, that's different...it's the whispers that make me happy!)

6) Popcorn and Junior Mints. Yum.

5) Triscuits. Proof that I do love something other than chocolate! And when it's important to be drinking plenty of water, like when you're pregnant, they come in very, very handy! (Just thinking about eating them is making me thirsty!)

4) The concordance in my Bible.

3) Decorating cakes! A cake is such a delicious canvas!

2) Aidan's alien pencil sharpener. I am not kidding. Ever since my nice electric one broke 8 years ago, I have gone through several cheap little sharpeners and they make me crazy! Sometimes they work, or they only work for the first 7 pencils. Most of the time, the best they will do is give you a tip that is not quite as dull as when you started trying to sharpen it 12 minutes ago. And sometimes they just break your pencil tip. But this year, Aidan picked a sharpener for school that looks like an alien and one eye is a large tip sharpener and the other eye is a regular pencil sharpener. Every time I use it, I get giddy when I pull it out and find a perfectly sharpened pencil tip. Every time! I love that thing! (And I'm very protective of it and don't like to share. What if something happened to it?)

1) Gingerbread houses! My mom gave us a kit which we will be doing tomorrow night (or tonight if basketball is canceled due to our lovely weather)! Gary's mom loved gingerbread houses and got me hooked on them. There have been years that we didn't get around to making one but it really is one of my favorite things to do during Christmas. This year I'm planning on baking the gingerbread pieces next week, so that when we have 8 kids here for Christmas break we can all make our own house...or something.

I haven't decided what to do yet. The first year with Karen, we made a bird house. We've also made churches, dog houses, and a tee pee! I've got until next week, so if anyone has any ideas for a fun gingerbread house...please share!

*And now I have to add one more...11) The fact that as I've been writing this, Rachel has been talking one goldfish at a time upstairs and feeding them to the cat. How do I know this? Because each time she took one and headed up the stairs she would peek around the corner and tell me "Deedee eat fish." And now she's trying to sneak past me with the whole box. I'm sensing that it's time to start my cleaning!