Happiness is....

Taking cue from Kristen and Indigirl, here's what made me happy today:
1. Getting up at 7 am after having gone to bed at 3 am and seeing the look of joy on my oldest's face when he sees that I've finished embroidering all the heart-shaped boxes with his classmates names.
2. L. getting ready for school without a hassle, and being early in getting him to school.
3. Big kisses from J. when he comes home after a sleepover at grandma's and breakfast I didn't have to cook.
4. Shopping in the toy store by myself and not aving to say no to anyone, even myself!
5. Finding bargains on Ryan's Room dolls and Melissa and Doug toys at a local toy store that sells hard-to-find, classic toys that stimulate children's imaginations.
6. Seeing the best toys are the ones that don't make noise and having my children confirm that fact by having a blast.
7. Having 7 Whole Grains Honey Puff Kashi with ice cold milk for dinner because the children already ate dinner with grandma.

I usually don't have class on Fridays (thank goodness), but today was a help session for organic chem, so I ended up on campus. I have a busy weekend of studying ahead of me, so I decided to take the afternoon and relax. While on my way home and childless for the moment, I got sidetracked by --a toy store--. I drive past every day on my way to campus, and I always think that I should stop in some time and see what's on sale.

L. is in an in-between stage at the moment. The past couple of years have been all about Thomas the Tank Engine and Bob the Builder for him, but he is showing waning interest in these things. It's difficult to find other things that he's interested in. He's to the point now where computer games and TV are the thing to do. I don't mind if he plays a little bit of computer games (usually timed to J.'s nap to keep things quiet) of the JumpStart variety (no more than 30 minutes) or watch a little Noggin or something on the Discovery Science channel (again, no more than 60 minutes), but that's all he wants to do these days.

So being able to go into the store today without the kids was heaven. I browsed for over an hour. Long enough for the folks working the store to wonder if I was casing the joint for a stickup. This store actually is very child friendly, and I'm sure J. would have been working the train table pretty hard, but it is much easier to shop sans children, no matter what kind of shopping I'm doing. I came away with a few toys and some great ideas for things I'd like to do. More on all that another time. Off to catch up on a little sleep!