I know....it's long. Grab a soda and some cookies or something and read.

Before Megan was born, my mother in law gave me this great book. It is called Simple Abundance by Sarah Ban Breathnach. It has been well read, and has marks on the cover from being carried around in suitcases from the trips it has taken, the moves to various houses, and several pages are dog eared. It is a simple book, each month kind of has a theme, and each day has a date and you can read just one page. It is a cool book to have throughout the year, as it starts on New Years Day. I also have enjoyed that over the years that I have owned this book, the meaning of it changes with your life.

Can you tell I love this book? Anybody who is into the current trends with scrapbooking would really like it. It is kind of along the lines of what Ali talks about with the everyday stuff being important.

Today's little entry is titled: Standing knee deep in a river and dying of thirst. Here is my favorite paragraph from the page:

The revelation that we have everything we need in life to make us happy but simply lack the conscious awareness to appreciate it can be as refreshing as lemonade on a hot afternoon. Or it can be as startling as cold water being thown in our face. How many of us go through our days parched and empty, thirsting after happiness, when we're really standing knee deep in the river of abundance?

Then I peeked at tomorrows entry, which made me think when I was sitting on the couch just relaxing and looking outside earlier today.

How happy are you right now?

Do you even know? Most women know what makes their parents, partners or children happy. But when it comes to an awareness about the little, specific things in life that bring a smile to our faces and contentment to our own hearts, we often come up short....

blah blah blah...

then this:

What is missing from many of our days is a true sense that we are enjoying the lives we are living. It is difficult to experience moments of happiness if we are not aware of what it is we genuinely love. We must learn to savor small, authenitc moments that bring us contentment. Take the time to slowly arrange a bouquet of flowers in order to appreciate their colors, fragrance and beauty. Sip a cup of tea on the front stoop in the sunshine. Pause for five minutes to pet a purring cat. Simple pleasures waiting to be enjoyed. Simple pleasures often overlooked.

Let us grasp a new idea this year. Let us grasp the awareness of what it is that makes us truly happy. Let us consider our personal preferences and learn how to recoggnize, then embrace, moments of happiness that are uniquely our own.

I know that this is an epic long blog entry for me, and thanks if you have read it all! LOL! I love this book. It is kind of like an owners manual for life. It reminds you of things when you start to get busy and caught up in other things and whooshes me right back to a level where I know that I am OK. I normally don't get all this 'woo woo heavy' on my blog, but in everything I have been doing today I keep thinking about it.

So the small everyday moments that make me happy include: getting an email from a friend or family member, that first moment after school when I pick up my kids and everybody is happy to be going home, watching my cat lay in a patch of sunshine coming through the window, (Laura knows the spot since she and the cat had to fight out who got to sit there!) snuggling with my kids on the couch on cold days like today, completing a layout that I LOVE, and that first sip of a coke in the morning! I know there are more, but those are the first that come to mind.

I'm scrapping tonight. So I'll post something later!