A Few of My Favorite Things

Tonight while I was folding the mountain of clean laundry that I had created throughout the day, Jill came home from work. She's been home for about 45 minutes now (10:30 PM). As I continued attempting to find the base of Mt. Raiment, Jill started playing the piano. As she played, I began thinking about how much I love it when she plays the piano.

At some point I thought to myself, "this is one my favorite things." The "this" in this sentence refers to listening to Jill playing the piano. Unfortunately, I don't get to listen to her playing very often.

Below is a short list of some my favorite things in life. None of these are "major" things; they are simple little, every day-kind of things. (Well, some of them are not so every day, but I wouldn't mind them being.)

Behold.....a few of my favorite things (in no particular order):

• Listening to Jill play the piano
  - As much as I love to do this, it is 100% out of my control. I would love to have the sound of the piano being played more regularly. But let's face it, how often does Jill have time to sit down and play the piano without at least one kid trying to "help" her play?

• Folding laundry with my wife
  - "Strange thing to have as a favorite," you say? Well, for all you moms out there (and hopefully some dads), you know how easy it is to let the clean laundry you just pulled out of the dryer end up on your bed. And then the next load and the next load and...well you get the idea. Around our house, we tend the follow the paycheck-to-paycheck way of laundry. Sometimes I think we are just cycling our clothes from the dryer to our bodies and back to the washer. I swear, no matter how hard I try, those same garments wind up right back in the laundry baskets again!! What is a parent to do? Well for me, putting the laundry away always has to wait until the evening. Tonight was no exception. Often when Jill gets home from work after 9:30 PM, I am in the bedroom folding clean clothes. I love it when she comes in to help me (especially when I don't even need to ask)...not so much when I still have to do it all myself. The beauty of folding clothes together for all you Doubting Thomases out there is that we get to spend time together. We talk, we laugh, we catch up ("Grace did what today?"). For families like ours where both parents work, sometimes it feels like we are just "ships passing in the night" and we don't get much time together. So all that having been said, yes, I do love to fold laundry with my wife.

• Sound of Jill playing and laughing with the kids
  - Yes, the "simple" things are the best. Jill has a way of getting the kids (especially Ember) to laugh that is just great. She has this [fake] laugh that she can do that makes the kids crack up. I love it!

• Family dinner
  - In this case I am not referring to the times when we just feed the kids out necessity. (You mean you are hungry again?? I just fed you yesterday!) I am referring to the times when we actually get to sit down together at the table and have a meal together. Times when we have don't have to rush out the door to this appointment or that meeting.

• The sound of the kids playing
  - I mean the times when they are happily playing together. No screaming, no crying, no bleeding....you know what I am talking about. The times when you can actually believe the words of the primary song, "...they are so good to me, I want to spend my life with them...". 'Nough said.

• Google
  - My kids have discovered the joy of Google. However, they haven't quite made the distinction between the Internet and Google. They know that in Google you can type a word and magically, virtually unlimited information about that word shows up. Really, though, who hasn't used the verb "Googled" in regular discussion. Personally, I couldn't live without it. (Was there Internet before Google? Man may never know.) I use it everyday. Thank you Google!

• The kids doing what they are supposed to do....on their own
  - There are times, fleeting moments, in every parent's life (or at least I would like to think so) when a child can be found to be doing what the parent asked them to do. Following is an example from my own family: After Ember turned eight year's old and was baptized, I began to impart upon her my wisdom. Okay, not so much. Really, I started a totalitarian rule regarding personal scripture reading. Jill and I have given her an additional hour past Ben and Grace's bedtime. As part of her "extra" 60 minutes, she has to spend 10 minutes doing personal scripture reading. As Jill and I remind her, night after night, there is push back a good deal of the time. However, from time to to time, she just does it with no complaining at all. There are even fewer times when she does it without being asked or reminded. Hallelujah!! I love those times. Maybe by the time she is a teenager, she will actually understand what she is reading.

Okay, I know that was a long post. I'm sorry. But I had to get that off my chest. Believe it or not, I actually had to shorten my list. When I realized how long this is, I had to drop some from this list. Good thing that doesn't mean I have to remove them from my list.