#3 You Don't Have to Win Every Time

When I first started playing games with my son, he would freak out if he didn't win. Now granted he was four, but it really wasn't any fun to play with him.

Fast forward two years and many upsets and fits later, we now have game Saturdays. I love it! Yesterday we played a fantastic game of Star Wars Monopoly and we both had an enjoyable time. When he didn't win the game he smiled and handed me over the money and said, "Let's do it again." I feel like I had won the lottery. He finally realizes that he doesn't have to win every time, but it might be fun just to play.

"Ultracompetitive people, who always need to win, end up enjoying things less. If they lose they are very disappointed, and if they win it's what they expected would happen anyway." 100 Secrets of Happy People

#2 Use a Strategy for Happiness

Today I think I am failing at a strategy...I am in a little bit of a funk. It seems the looming graduation date with several challenges that have been hitting us one after another has got me a little down. Now I am trying to focus on the positive and think about the great things that are heading our way, but it is hard when your laptop crashes, applications that are due are falling apart and boxes are not packing themselves. So...I will write this down now, and move forward. We keep reminding ourselves that the struggle is just the forecast of something better on the horizon, and I have to believe it or I would be crushed by the stress of today.

#1 Your Life Has Purpose and Meaning

"We are all connected, and we are all affected by the decisions and even the existence of those around us" 100 Simple Secrets of Happy People

If we live so that we understand that we are all connected I imagine that we will have a happier world. No more evil glares or middle fingers to strangers from behind the safety of our cars. No more ranting at perfect strangers on the phone or at a service counter. Pleasant interchange would rule and our happiness would spread.

Anyone heard the phrase, "If momma ain't happy, ain't nobody happy."? It is so true, moms control not only the happiness in their homes, but the happiness in the world. When a mom is happy she sends happy kids and dads to school, work and play. Their small smiles brighten teachers, lunch workers, neighbors, friends, strangers and co-workers.

Imagine what would happen if all moms pledge to send their kids to school with a smile instead of frantic mayhem in the morning. Wouldn't the world be so much brighter? Here's my pledge to prepare the night before the things that need to be ready for the day, and to send my kid to school on a positive, happy note; so in turn he can spread that happiness to those he meets throughout the day.

Hoping that you will pledge to spread a small amount of happiness in your corner of the world.

Happiness Experiment

I consider myself a fairly happy person. I am satisfied with my life and glean great joy from the experiences I have. This is not to say that I don't have "bad hair days" (just ask my husband), but I really do try to choose happiness over the crappy things of life. While I say this I believe that there is always room for improvement. I want to be able to get out of a funk as fast as possible and not dwell on the negative, so I have decided to create an experiment. An experiment that will hopefully change my life and the life of my readers for the better. An experiment that will be a journey through a book that immensely helped me on my journey to "Ritkiss".

About four years ago I received a book from my administrator with a challenge to read it. In fact he asked all of his staff to read it and I agreed. It was modestly titled, 100 Simple Secrets of Happy People. I was definitely intrigued. We were trudging through some very difficult times, and I needed the "secrets" of being happy. We had already come up with our catchphrase "Ritkiss", but I still craved more; more ways to put a smile on my face and truly feel it. I could slap a good smile on my face, but I couldn't fool too many; unfortunately I wear my emotions on my sleeve like a soccer mom cheers for her child at the big game. I wanted to feel "Ritkiss" not just say it. I truly desired a need for some happiness, and not the fleeting kind that comes from buying too many shoes, but the luscious kind that you can sink your teeth into after a hard day. So I began my journey to become more happy, and I am proud to say that this book help me rediscover some of the truths that I had been taught as a child, but somehow lost.

So now here I am, a much happier person in a much different state than I was five years ago... Please join me on my experiment with exploring this book in detail with my life. As I said, I do believe that I am a happy person, and with that in mind I will strive to become even more so as I take a deeper look into a book that help me on my journey to become much happier : 100 Simple Secrets of Happy People.

Return of the potty humor

So I knew it was only a matter of time before the potty humor would once again resurface in our home. We went through it with our first child when he was about 3 and endured the snickers, laughs, hee haws and snorts about anything that had anything to do with the bathroom; so I assumed that our second son would enter the stage of the poo poo talk very soon. What I did not anticipate was the six-year-old reverting to his old ways of talking about the bathroom almost every other sentence.

It seems as though I will be getting a double dose of the oh so fun potty humor.

Not quite the "INFORAMTION" I was looking for

Looking for work is a pain, sorting through job postings, or lack thereof, posting resumes, hoping that someone will have the notion to look up the name on the paper.

Well we are in the thick of this process as my husband nears graduation. We are less than two months away from graduation, and our prospects are about the same as when we began...zero. Well maybe not quite that bad, but it definitely feels that way.

And to make matters worse, I opened the resume my husband has been sending out and using for the past two years. I know I have looked at it before, but somehow a big fat typo was facing me in bold giant print. My husband spelled INFORMATION: INFORAMTION. Really?!? I couldn't believe I was looking at the resume, THE resume that he had been using all this time. Was this the same resume that I so blindly sent to 40 people hoping that someone would pick it up and think wow this is the guy that we need to add to our illustrious organization? No, it couldn't be, but alas as we looked through the records it was the self-same resume that I had zipped off across the country via email.

So what did we do when we discovered the blunder of the century. We laughed, we laughed until we cried. What else could we do?

Here's hoping that our mistake has been overlooked, as we had both done for the past two years.
Curse Microsoft for not spell-checking all caps

What's a womanquin?

That's a very good question...one that was asked just a day or two ago by my six-year-old son. Mesmerized by our latest shopping trip he kept looking around at the stores in awe of all the clothes and the lifeless models that so stylishly displayed them.

He asked quizzically, "What are those people that don't move with all those clothes on?"

I said, "Oh them? Those are mannequins."

"So what's that?" He asked pointing to the woman mannequin, "Is that a womanquin?"

I couldn't stop laughing...has he really been that unexposed to shopping that he hasn't seen many mannequins before? I didn't think we had really been that far removed from reality. Now that I think about it Wal-Mart doesn't really have mannequins and with our limited budget from grad school we have been on a very few, in and out shopping trips; only buying the basics. This had been the only leisurely shopping trips I had been on with my kids since we started this back-to-school journey six years ago.

I have hope that my two-year-old won't have to wait that long to discover the world of mannequins.

Keeping my fingers crossed--economy permitting ;)