A/C + New Sheets + Family Time = Happiness

I slept GOOD last night.  I think I owe to a combination of a fixed A/C and the new sheets we put on our bed yesterday.  I found them on clearance at Target on Sunday and boy am I glad I snatched them up.  We were way overdue for new sheets.  What a difference they make!  It's kind of like when you get new underwear; you forget how great new ones are until you upgrade and then you wonder why you waited so long.  At least that's the case for me...

After a great night's sleep, it was much easier to hit the gym for a quick cross-training workout on the elliptical this morning.  I have been defaulting to the elliptical quite a bit lately since I can read while I work out on it.  This morning the time flew by as I plugged along on The Happiness Project.  Today's major takeaway came from this quote:

"When money or health is a problem, you think of little else; when it's not a problem, you don't think much about it.  Both money and health contribute to happiness mostly in the negative; the lack of them brings much more unhappiness than possessing them brings happiness."  

I need to learn to not take all of the great things I have in life for granted.  God is good to me and has given me so much.  I need to be thankful for what I have and see the happiness that just being in the moment provides.  Life is good!

Gretchen Rubin, the author, spoke quite a bit on the "Money can't buy happiness" argument.  It's an interesting argument as it's true that money can't provide happiness, but not having to worry about money can make it a lot easier to enjoy things that make you happy.  For example, if one of your loves is traveling and you work on minimum wage, a larger salary could make it much easier to travel.  I agree with her that it depends on the kind of person you are (do you love the theater or prefer a night in on the couch with Netflix?), the kind of things you like to spend your money on (organic foods or whatever's on sale?), and the amount of money you have relative to the people you're surrounded by or used to (do you have the smallest house on the block?).  Just some food for thought...As you can tell, I'm captivated by her insights.

With my workout and reading out of the way, I have the majority of my day left to spend with my my 3 favorite men.  We started off our day together with oat bran pancakes.  (The recipe needs some tweaks before I share it with you, but I'm making headway.)  Then we headed off to Coffe Bar Blue Door for Story Time.  We had a great turnout, with lots of new faces.  

The bubbles never get old for the kiddos. 

We had some really great listeners while we read a couple of cute books...

I just discovered Karma Wilson's books and she does a great job with rhyming and being silly, two major selling points for me.

The rest our day is dedicated to family time--a family lunch outing, a bike ride, probably some book reading and truck riding, a little fireman hat wearing...

Colton

(If you don't have these hats, you don't know what you're missing.  They come complete with a siren that never lets us which my boys adore.  It's quite relaxing... )

Mason

...and a little party for the grown-ups once the kids are asleep.  I'm hoping things go smoothly and we get some quality time in.  We're due!

Enjoy your day!