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Tonight we're having friends over for dinner. We will be serving pizza and I bet a million trillion dollars my friend shows up in pajama pants. Let's just cross our fingers they're the ones with Darth Vader plastered all over them, because those are awesome and everyone knows you wear your most awesome pajama pants when you go visiting.
I have a pile of laundry on the couch. I might get it put away before company comes, but probably not. I do make a point to put the underwear away before friends come calling, because...well...it's underwear.
The boys are outside, torturing the neighbors with a whistle. If you're five, whistle blowing never gets old. If you're a mommy, it takes about half of a shrill toot before you send your child to the backyard to serenade the rest of the neighborhood. Whistles: another reason to thank the Lord that it's 70 degrees outside. Come thou Spring!
Speaking of Spring, I invested in sidewalk chalk. If you have some money lying around, I suggest you invest in sidewalk chalk because just the sight of it on your cement will make you happy for days. If you need a five year old, you may borrow mine. He's really good at making quails.
I've held several babies this week. They're so soft and precious, and their mothers are so tired and...tired. The babies smell like magic. Unless they're poopy. But usually? Magic.
My sous chef
The other day my 5 year old asked me if I was rich. I hesitated, my Puritan roots rearing their ugly head, but then I answered happily, "Yes. I'm rich."
"Oh", he replied, "Carson is rich too. He showed me. He had a bunch of coins in his pocket."
I laughed, because wealth is usually a matter of perspective. If you're five, rich is a pocket full of pennies.
All this glorious weather, baby smelling, company coming, flower filled living has made me feel extremely wealthy. Because the older (ahem) I get, the more I realize it's not so much the coins as the chalk quails and the children. It's the love we pour out during Tuesday night pizza parties. It's cookies and community that make us rich.
And of course, money. Money makes us rich too.
It doesn't matter what makes us rich, what matters is what we do with it. What do we do with our pennies and our pizzas? The Christian answer is to share, and I agree. But sometimes I think we forget the first thing to do when you are blessed with riches is to be thankful. We tend to feel guilty about the color in our lives, about the extra cereal we have in the pantry, about the coins in our pocket. We needn't wear all black wool and run around telling everyone not to count chickens when we have a basketful of eggs. Instead let's be joyful in the Springtime, when the hens are laying and we have cookies to spare. If there's one thing we're short of in this world, it's happy faces.
"In the day of prosperity be happy..." Ecclesiastes 7:14
