Is there anything better than laughing?

The sound of laughter rings throughout every inch of space.  Deep, belly laughs that leave us gasping for air.  Tears stream down our cheeks, where rivers of mascara would have followed if we had bothered to wear any.  Our lungs move tiny amounts of air in and out as we try desperately to catch our breaths.  It is a futile effort and only serves to set off another series of laughter.  We try again to contain ourselves, to establish some decorum, but gloriously fail.  The process repeats itself over and over again until we are nearly passing out from lack of oxygen.  These moments do more for my psyche than a thousand hours spent on a psychologists couch or a thousand dollars of retail therapy.  For just a few moments they flood my body with enough endorphin's to annihilate any negative thoughts that might be rolling around. 

She looks at me and says, "this reminds me of that time when we were laughing like this and that thing happened and..."

off we go again.

She has my DNA

Sometimes our children are the best of us.  There are days that I am blown away by the kindhearted, generous, unconditionally loving little human that came out of me.  I look at her and I am humbled by the sweet spirit she embodies. 

Then there are the days that the darling little face looking back is anything but angelic.  It is full of attitude and disdain and undeniably me. 

Heaven have mercy on me...we haven't even hit the teenage years yet.  

The Secret of a Happy Relationship

Earlier today a couple of friends suggested that I write a book about my relationship with N.  For a split second it rolled around in my brain because, how much fun would that be, but then I came back down to planet earth and laughed.  I do love to write and I do love my life, but it seems like an awfully cocky thing to tell the world we have it so right that everyone should follow our lead.  Of course there are plenty of people out there who have written about how to have happy relationships who have done just that - and I have read them all.  Some have had good advice, some have made me roll my eyes, and some have been so terrible that I couldn't even finish them.  Who am I to tell the world that we hold all the secrets to lifelong bliss and are willing to share them for the low, low price of $24.95?

Truthfully though, we do get it right most of the time.  Oh, I am sure that a million people would disagree with me since we are not a typical heterosexual couple, barring us from any sort of credit.  But I can say with certainty that it is the healthiest relationship I have ever been in.  I wake up most days and can't believe that this life around me actually belongs to me.  On our worst days, we are kinder and better to one another than nearly all of the people I know.  We are not saints by any means, but we strive to embody the 1 Corinthians definition of love on a daily basis.  We meet each other where we can and offer our hearts fully, without reservation, knowing that what we give is a fraction of the blessings bestowed upon us.  It is the kind of love that transforms me in a way that I didn't know was possible.  Even as I sit here, a smile is playing across my lips.  I just can't help but talk about how wonderful it is.  Maybe I should write something after all...

So what do you think?  Would the handful of readers that I actually have be interested in a book?

Magnets are Magic

I am the stingiest person on the planet when it comes to my face products.  I have been blessed with fairly decent skin and have never seen the point in spending that much.  I would rather take my mediocre skin to an island in the Caribbean than slather myself with a tiny jar that costs as much as a plane ticket.

But if those products magically show up in my house as a gift, I am not above a little indulgence...after all I am a girl at heart.  In order to share in the fun, my sweet friend Sarah (or Sarita as N calls her) came over for a mini spa night.  It might have been the limoncello talking, but we decided that photo documenting our night was the best idea ever.

Here's us straight from work with our regular makeup on before we started any of the mask

 We removed our makeup and washed our faces before we put on the mask. 

After waiting the allotted time we used the magnet bar that came with the mask to remove it.  The bar literally sucked the mask off our faces pulling a ridiculous amount of nastiness out of our pores with it.  After it was all done, we massaged the rest of the oils into our skin and voila!  We were shiny and new with baby soft skin.

This stuff is AMAZING.  There is absolutely no way that I would have ever bought into the Dead Sea Mud Mask before trying it this time, but I think if I try really hard I can justify it.  Or buy it and forget the new boots I wanted this fall.  Who am I kidding? We all know I'll just buy them both.

I Didn't Know

I didn't know it was going to be this hard.

There are so many things about being a mama that are harder than I thought they were going to be, but this takes the cake.

When I got divorced I knew that we would both move on to new relationships.  I was truly happy when he got remarried to a lovely woman who makes him happy.  I expected it to be hard, but it never was.  It felt like setting each other free.  It was a little odd to see my daughter being taken care of by another woman, but I found peace to let it go eventually.

Or so I thought.

Today was my baby girl's first day of kindergarten.  We all went this morning to take pictures and drop her off.  I was totally fine with sharing that moment.  We all hugged Alaina and sent her into the classroom peacefully.  But it's not my weekend with Alaina so her stepmomma was the one to pick her up from school today.  In my heart of hearts, I am so happy that Alaina has so many people to love and protect her.  But not being the one to pick her up from her first day of school was brutal. 

From the time I found out I was having a girl, I dreamed of this day.  I pictured every detail from curling her hair and walking her in to scooping her up in the afternoon to hear about how her day was.  I imagined us, hand in hand, going to get ice cream as she told me all about her new teacher and all the friends she made.  This day has been years in the making.  And yet, here I sit, without my girl, tears streaming.  I am truly grateful that Amy had her call to tell me about her day; I know that she didn't have to do that and I loved hearing her excited little voice.

It should have been me.  I carried her.  I breathed for her and gave up coffee for her.  I panted through hours of contractions as she tried to make her way into the world.  I bear the stretch marks and the c-section scar where they pulled her out of my belly.  I pumped gallons of milk when she was in the NICU and cried the first time I nursed her at my breast.  I sat up with her in the middle of the night and rocked her back to sleep when she was fussy.  It was supposed to be me picking her up from her first day of school.  I know that sounds so selfish, I do, but it was supposed to be me.

Someone please tell me it gets easier with time.  My heart can't bear much more.  I didn't know it would be. This. Hard.

I didn't know.

Random Acts of Kindness

I have been wanting to get a post written about Disney for weeks, but just haven't quite found the time to put all the pictures together and actually sit down and write it.  I would like to blame this on the unpacking, etc that has been happening since we got home but that would be a lie as my suitcase is still sitting in the office completely full.  I promise that eventually I will get the pictures up and tell you how amazing it was.

This morning however, I have to talk about random acts of kindness.  This morning the car in front of me paid for my order at Starbucks.  I was pleasantly surprised and drove away feeling as if my entire morning had been transformed.  This instance alone would be enough to tell you about, but this is not the first time this has happened.  Last week, at the very same Starbucks, someone else also paid for my coffee!  As I was telling N about it, she mentioned that it happens to her often at the Starbucks near her office.  Listening to her, I remembered reading something about a line where each person paid for the car behind them that lasted for something like 1000 cars, also at a Starbucks.  

It got me thinking about positive energy and how like attracts like.  I don't know what it is about Starbucks, but something that they are doing to make the world a kinder, more generous place, is rubbing off on their patrons.  What if we all started doing things to make the world a better place?  I'm not saying that you need to adopt an orphanage in Africa, unless that's you're thing, in which case go for it.  I'm saying that here, in our cities we could make such a difference if we all committed to going out of our way to be kind on a more regular basis.  It can be money, unexpected forgiveness, holding a door open for someone that's just a little farther behind us than we normally would wait for, whatever moves you.  At least once a week, commit to doing something to make one person's day better.

If you do, and you write about your experience, please let me know or link back - I would love to hear about it!

Wishing you happiness and peace on this lovely Wednesday,

Stephanie

P.S. - I started p90x yesterday and I think I might die.  Please carry on your kindness without me if I do.

Counting Down

We are in full-on vacation planning mode around our house.  I have finally realized that I need to stop purchasing things on Etsy (read: I'm out of time to have them shipped before we leave) and my bank account thanks me for it.  Just today I got the last thing I need and thanks to my sweet friend CC I have both an awesome bag to take into the park with me and a collapsing duffle to throw in the car for things that we buy and need to bring home.  It's as if she knows me or something.

There are approximately 25 "To-Do before we leave" lists floating around the house that all of the same thing on them.  I keep misplacing one and then making a new one.  I feel like I should have it committed to memory at this point, but no such luck.

I haven't finished one of the projects that I need to before we leave, but I have found time to look up new Disney projects on Pinterest.  Because clearly, I'm a girl who knows her priorities.

I mean, it was far more important last night to make these than it was to do laundry:

Doesn't everyone make chocolate covered strawberries that are Disney themed to prepare for their trip?

No, just me?

Well you're missing out.  Alaina and I had so much fun making them and they sure were delicious to eat last night while I was packing sitting on the couch watching television.

Tonight I am hoping to cross at least a few more things off the list...or bake some chocolate chip cookies for the car trip.