Sometimes the best days just sneak up on you.

Groceries were number one on the list today. I'm not typically a big fan of grocery shopping and it's a chore I let my poor hubby attend to whenever possible. Oddly enough, I don't mind riding along to keep HIM company while HE shops... just don't like to do the shopping myself. So today I kind of took that approach with the kids and it worked out just fine... they shopped and I went along to keep them company. It's amazingly easy to play these mind games with myself.

When we got home, I decided to focus on one my favorite distractions... paper. I have a thing for paper. I love the different colors and textures and just seeing what I can put together. Pens and markers and stencils and funky scissors. Perhaps I'm still a kindergartner at heart. Anyway, I've been needing to send my aunt a card, and cards are always a good excuse to get out the paper.

I started working on a card. Maddie thought it looked like a good idea so she joined me. We decided that maybe we wouldn't be so tardy about sending cards if we made up a few ahead of time. Before the afternoon was over, we'd made about ten, each entirely unique and textured and scribbled and stamped upon. I love them.

I once read a Dear Abby column (another of my favorite distractions) where a woman complained that her son-in-law sent her home-made greeting cards. She thought that if he really cared, he'd make a trip to the store to get her something store bought. I've never understood that attitude. I'll take a hand-made card, or heck, a hand-written note, ANY day of the year. There's nothing special about getting a run-of-the-mill Hallmark. There is something special about a piece of paper that someone has taken the time to craft with their hands.

And computer generated cards are just as good, for me. Personal email notes, the same. Perhaps people don't feel the same about my cards. Don't know; don't really care. If you could see the time we had today, making those cards. There has to be some of that positive energy stored up in them... just a little bit is bound to fly out of the envelope and get you when you open it up.

Anyway, I think part of the reason the day was so great--more even than usual--is that I completely removed myself from my typical routine. Just sitting at the table all day in the middle of the house gave me such a wonderful view of the beautiful people my kids are. I watched Kaman and Maddie as they worked at the computer discussing the finer points of Neopets and checking email. Evie spent most of the afternoon working on a recorded voice project for an unschooling animation series she hopes to be a part of. She wrote her script at the table with me. She then went to the computer to type up her work (so that she could read it better). Then she spent a full hour recording and re-recording... until she had it just right. I was blown away by her dedication to the project as well as the end result. Perhaps, I told her later, she'll look back on this and think of it as her first job interview.

My son pulled out the microscope and examined things--ALL sorts of things--for hours. Just the whirl of their minds, constantly working, was enough to keep me in a daze. I just want to bottle these days up and store them forever. Days when I am just mom, just there for the conversation, just there to feel the textures of the paper... just being and watching them be.

This is life the way it is meant to be lived. Moment by precious moment.