It's The Simple Things In Life

It's an 'unwind-relax-and thank God for life and time-off' thing around here. It happens over the summer vacation, at special celebrations, and of course for the major holidays like Christmas. I find a crew of family members hunkered down with me for movie marathons which I have started to refer to as movie parties. People are welcome; snacks and finger foods, almost required. It's so much fun.

I love to step back and observe everyone in my domain just having fun. It's heartwarming to see the kids laughing and having fun, to hear the opinions and exclamations about the movie, to see everyone just spending that time there together. Of course, there are the moments when someone has to shout at someone else about their noise level (we all want to hear what's happening in the movie after all), or someone is plotting about how to get the last snack, or someone 'stole' someone else's seating place. But it's life, and it's family, and it's time together. It's very cool.

We had the first movie party of the holiday season yesterday. It was impromptu and we had no snacks...well one of my sisters had one bag of barbecue chips. But it was great. I just loved having them here, on my couch and upsetting my orderly and neat space for a while. A cleanup and/or straightening out process is always necessary in the aftermath but it's so worth it.

You know, before the semester ended, and before my holiday vacation began, I had been guilt-tripping about my social media visits (which did go on way too long when I should have been studying etcetera). I imagined I would be freely and lengthily catching up with the Twitter and Facebook worlds once the holidays officially began for me. Needless to say, from that time exactly, I have had little desire to spend my time browsing social media. I guess there is just some perspective right now. These precious moments and opportunities aren't there all the time. And they end all too soon. It really is the simple things in life that matter most. Simple things make the most authentic and happy memories. We should never be in a hurry to leave them behind, and never substitute them for anything else.