What is Joy Anyway

Children bring us joy. I don't mean that only in the grand sense of things in some immense gigantic way. I think children remind us of the joy that there is in small things. Today, we went to the park to play. Bryce, Aubrey, Parker and Gavin made immediate friends with every other child at the park (age 2 years to 11 years). They ran around like banshees (which is fine when we are outside) and had a wonderful time with their new bffs. However, Logan was the one that really got to me. He is at that akward age where he doesn't want to sit in the stroller while the other kids play, but he is a little too young to actually be able to do much serious play. Walking on sand is a challenge for him. Yet, because it was hard for him to balance on the sand, he fell over and his little hands ended up immersed in the tiny particles. He was immediately thrilled. He spent the next 30 minutes grabbing handfulls of sand, raising them shoulder height and then dropping them. He couldn't get enough. He ended up covered from head to toe in sand, but he had the time of his life and I remembered how much joy there is in a pile of sand.

Also, Bryce has been working on a project for the reflections contest at his school. Their subject is "WOW" (whoever came up with that lame idea should be sent back to kindergarten where people still have immaginations). Bryce originally wanted to make a video about some times you might say "wow" in your life, but that didn't work out. So, he decided he would take a picture. His subject was our easily excitable dog, Moka. Bryce spent about 45 minutes in the yard trying to get a picture of the entire dog (we ended up with lots of pictures of rear ends as Moka ran through the frame before Bryce got the picture). He stuck with it and we were really proud of him. Take a peek at the picture he chose, he is really proud of it. He, too, is a joy!!