Happiness Lies in the Small Joys

“You know Andrew, I don’t want to go away for a spa weekend with the girls, I just wanna hang out here with you and the kids.”

Wifey and I have had some great adventures.

We got married in Bermuda. We spent our first two working and playing in Colorado. We taught English in China, studied Chinese in Beijing, and travelled extensively around the far east.

After kid one, we settled into the greatest adventure of all, or at least I did.

Adventures? Nasty, disturbing, uncomfortable things. Make you late for dinner!

Bilbo Baggins, The Hobbit, or There and Back Again

Over the (15) years of parenthood Wifey has often opined that we don’t do enough. We’re too homebound and don’t have enough adventures. Wifey was raised a Baggins, and needed to express her inner Took, at least for a while.

Personally, since the boys were born, I’m more of a Baggins than a Took, but Wifey still wanted adventures.

Lately I’ve seen a change, and this weekend she told me that her cousin was doing a spa day, but that she (wifey) had no desire to do it, and would rather hang out here with the boys and me. And so she did.

Not far from the StandUpRight homestead is a small lake, just big enough for ice fishing, and pond hockey. Sunday, I took the little guy out and I haven’t had so much fun since last year’s spring melt.

For an hour, there was nothing but kid 3 and me, the ice, sticks, sunshine and fresh air. It was a small slice of heaven in prison camp Ontario, and for a time, I completely forgot my troubles.

It is a small joy, pond hockey with the boys, and yet it is one of the greatest sources of happiness in my life.