How Sweet it Is

I have received blog awards from my blogging friends a few times over the last few years, and while I haven’t always managed to blog about them and share the love with others, I have always responded to the giver with a heart-felt thank you. I always appreciate the gesture and the thought, as well as the opportunity to gain some new readers and make some new friends.

Tracy at Four Wonders of Life recently nominated me as one of the recipients of this lovely award! But with great power comes great responsibility (or something like that).

Here are the rules of acceptance:

Here are the rules for the award:
1. Copy and paste the award on your blog.
2. Name the person who gave the award to you and link to their blog (or hyperlink).
3. List 10 things that make you happy.
4. Pass the award on to other bloggers and visit their blogs to let them know.

In no particular order, except the most important being first, here are 10 things that make me happy:

1. My beautiful, beautiful daughter, Samantha. I bet you all saw that coming. I mean, she’s the reason I blog. She’s the reason I do pretty much anything. She inspires me every single day. I remember when she was a baby and she would cry, I actually felt calmer. I could never understand why people freak out or get angry when babies cry. The fact that I had this beautiful little life in my hands made me feel absolute peace, and I knew that she would eventually relax and stop crying and look up at me with those big, unfathomably blue eyes, and smile.

(Okay, that’ll be the only long, wordy one – I’ll keep the other 9 shorter and just as sweet…)

2. Ice cream (hmmm…maybe this is in order!). I’m an addict. Ice cream, pretty much any flavor at all, makes me smile. I think Samantha is taking after me in that respect. It’s become a new tradition since last summer to surprise Samantha with a trip to Dairy Queen every once in a while, before dinner, but not so close as to spoil her appetite.

3. The colors orange and pink together, like Peach Melba. Or orange and turquoise, like sunrise on the beach. Mmmmm…beautiful.

4. My husband. He works so hard at everything he does, and is a consummate perfectionist. And he cooks. I might starve or have to survive on ice cream if he didn’t. He’s not always the easiest person to get along with, but he puts up with an awful lot in me, so who could really blame him? :-)

5. The ocean. I was never a beach person as a child or young adult, but I have grown to really enjoy the smell of the salt mixed with a hint of seaweed and suntan oil, the sound of the crashing waves, and the cry of the seagulls overhead (as you duck for cover from their gigantic and indiscriminate pooping).

6. Bluegrass music. I don’t actually seek it out or own any, but I do love it. This will probably surprise a lot of people who know me. I tend to get really patriotic, too, when I hear it. I love that the roots of America kind of live in the sound.

7. The 80s. The music (well, the 80s music I used to listen to, not the crap stuff); John Hughes movies; growing up in simpler times… Not the clothes or the hair styles, though. Those I could easily and happily forget about.

8. Gardening. My husband doesn’t know this about me yet, and he probably won’t even believe me when he reads this, since I have a pretty terrible track record in the past with the plants I’ve tried to grow in our apartments. Finding the time to do any gardening is difficult to do, though, because I’m chasing after Samantha on my days off, but I can’t wait to get my hands into the dirt and make things grow this year. Steve’s built a couple of raised beds for vegetable gardens and two raised flower boxes that I want Samantha to be able to make her own.

9. The internet. I continuously marvel at how much information is out there, and always breathe a sigh of relief that Samantha was born in this time of connection and knowledge for everyone in the blink of an eye.

10. Sleep. Sleep makes me happy. That feeling of putting my head on the pillow and pulling the blankets up to my neck is so overwhelming for me every night, and I succumb very quickly. I sometimes think I’d be capable of going to sleep in the middle of a crowded shopping mall or supermarket. Where there’s a will there’s a way.

So, that being said, here are my own nominees for this blog award:

Monica at Monkey Musings - her blindingly beautiful and growing family can be found here, with a particular focus on her chromosomally-enhanced little doll, John Michael.

Jo Ann at Ever Forward, Maya - Jo Ann and I "met" a while back through our photo postings on Flickr, and I have been dazzled by her gorgeous, sweet little girl, Maya, ever since.

Rob, from Really, I'm as Old as I Feel? - I also "met" Rob first through Flickr, a few years ago. He and his family (wife, Anny and adorable little girl, Abby) are not part of the Ds community, but wholeheartedly support all of our efforts at awareness, and for that I am so grateful. They even joined our Buddy Walk team this year, in the bone-chilling wind and rain! He writes of his family and of the challenges of life with chronic kidney disease.