Veggie Tales and Finding Happiness

I have a confession to make: I am obsessed with Veggie Tales. It's been over ten years since a friend attempted to explain the bizarre cartoon to me as follows:

"It's a bunch of vegetables that sing and tell Bible stories," she'd said.

Okaaaay, I'd thought. We're not going to be watching that. But she insisted on loaning me an episode, so we walked away from our morning play date with Rack, Shack and Benny on VHS. (Yes, VHS). Later that week, Energy and I curled up on the couch together to see what all the fuss was about. Really, I was planning on taking a little nap. I certainly didn't expect the quick-witted veggies and random silly songs to leave me doubling over in laughter. After that first video I became a dedicated veggie tales fan, buying several episodes for Energy and watching them with him when I should have been folding laundry.

Before I get to the real point of this blog post (which is Happiness) I have to share my all-time favorite silly song with you as evidence of how awesome Veggie Tales truly is. This song is a spoof on boy bands where a group of veggies known as 'Boyz in the Sink' confess a lurid secret to one of their girlfriends through a song titled 'Belly Button'. Go ahead and watch it. I dare you not to laugh.

Okay, so now that you've been indoctrinated, I'll move on. One of my favorite episodes of Veggie Tales is Madame Blueberry. It's the story of a horribly depressed Blueberry (get it? A blue berry?) who spends all her time pining for the nice things that her friends have. One day, salvation arrives at her door in the form of three salesmen promoting a new store (The Stuff Mart!) that has just moved in down the street from her. They promise happiness in the form of a store carrying everything she could ever want and more. They sing her a classically hilarious song introducing her to the Stuff Mart and enticing her to come with them to check it out. The final line in their song is, "Happiness waits at the stuff mart. All you need is lots....more....stuff!" (Sung in an appropriately melodramatic and ridiculous manner). Here is a recording of the song if you're interested, though it cuts off before the happiness line I referred to and I'm not savvy enough to upload my own version.

My kids typically watch Veggie Tales on Sundays (since it's one of the few shows we let them watch before church) and last Sunday the selection was Madame Blueberry. Consequently, the line "Happiness waits at the stuff mart" has been running through my mind all week (complete with background music, I might add.) I've been singing it while doing dishes, folding laundry, pushing my kids on the swings and, well, really any time my voice has been otherwise unoccupied.

However, since the idea that happiness waits at the Stuff Mart in the form of lots more stuff is obviously flawed, I felt it was appropriate to compose a list of what happiness is to me.

Happiness is:

Children's laughter

There is truly no better sound on earth

A warm chocolate chip cookie, fresh from the oven 

I'm sorry, but as much as I try to tell myself that this isn't an acceptable form of happiness, I can't deny that it makes me sublimely happy every time I eat one. Or ten.

The smell of rain 

Clean. Fresh. A new start.

Sleeping in

These days I would even take being allowed to wake up naturally at 7:00 am when my body says it's ready, as opposed to once every half hour starting at 5:00 am to accommodate various childish requests. For example, last Saturday Energy started doing his chores--the vacuuming, to be precise--at 6:30 am because he was awake and knows he's not allowed to turn on any screens until 7:00. While I admire his initiative and his desire to make good use of his time, I was not happy to hear vacuuming right outside my bedroom door (and the doors to the three youngest children in the house) so early on a Saturday morning. 

Watching my kids play together. Happily, of course.

This is especially sublime when they don't know I'm watching or listening.

 A properly functioning toilet that never has to be plunged or snaked

Did I mention I have five kids in a house with a septic tank and not enough bathrooms?

Eavesdropping outside my kids' bedroom doors after tucking them in at night

An invasion of privacy, you say? I hope they wouldn't see it this way. Anyway, so far I've only heard things that warm my heart. There is nothing quite like witnessing your children realize over time that they can rely on and confide in each other as siblings.

A good rainstorm without basement flooding or crazy-loud/scary thunder and lightening

Ever since I was a little girl, one of my favorite things was listening to rain fall while snuggling up with a good book and a blanket on the living room couch. But that was before I had to worry about grown-up things like flooded basements, ginormous trees in my backyard that bend unnaturally anytime the wind blows, and lightening that shakes my bones as it crashes so close I swear it's hit my house.

Mario Kart for Wii

I have four brothers, but despite their best efforts and to their great disappointment, I do not enjoy video games. They just feel like a pointless waste of time to me. But the one exception is Mario Kart. I loved it in the 80's when it came out for Nintendo, and I love playing it now on our Wii. Even though I still cannot make it through Rainbow Road (I couldn't in the original version and I can't now) without falling off a gazillion times, I still love this game. And I love playing it with my kids.

Lying on the trampoline with my family

Cloud-watching or gazing at the stars as they begin to emerge at the end of a summer day

Date night!!!

We've always made room in our budget for babysitting because my husband and I need those moments together to regroup, talk and remember why we fell in love.

Having a child that's old enough to babysit 

Oh, yeah! This. Though Energy is just barely twelve, he's been practicing changing diapers and putting his younger siblings to bed while I'm around. We have high hopes that our babysitting budget might soon be allocated elsewhere. (Or at least reduced, as I feel bad making him do it completely for free all the time.)

The smell of spring 

It smells like hope, making me instantly happy every year right as winter threatens to crush me for good. 

Having a creative outlet

There are several activities that I float between, but no matter what, I always have to allow myself a creative outlet. I believe humans were wired to create beauty and that we aren't whole without the opportunity to do so.

So in summary, happiness does not come from the stuff mart (ground-breaking revelation, right?). Nor does it come from the Success Mart, the Food Mart, or the Twitter Follower Mart (yes, those do exist). It doesn't even come from having a spotless house, exercising every day, always being on time, or the host of other things it's possible to fail at within the course of a week. Happiness is found in the simple, small moments of life. Our tiny successes (like getting five semi-presentable kids to church, even if they're grumpy about it and you were a half hour late). Our ability to love and be loved. Our freedom to try new things, even if we fail at them.

I have to link to another video here, (sorry for all the links today), because this video conveys what I'm trying to say so much better than I can. And the background music doesn't hurt either. If you only click on one link from this post, it should be this one.

That video makes me cry every time I see it! Now that you've seen it, do you have anything to add to my list? What is happiness to you? Leave it in the comments section below, and happy happiness seeking!

Birthday Parties 101--Five Things I Wish I'd Known Earlier

When Energy turned four years old, I decided to throw him a huge birthday bash. I was feeling guilty for not throwing him a party the previous year when he turned three, and decided his fourth birthday would be a party to remember. I settled on a carnival theme and began planning how to turn our cozy townhouse into a fairgrounds for a bunch of four-year-olds... in the middle of winter and without the benefit of a backyard, garage, or basement.

Despite the challenges, I was determined to make it work. I borrowed a huge plastic slide. I bought some large crawl-through toys and an exercise trampoline. I found a huge under bed storage tub at Wal-Mart and filled it with several giant bags of rice and tons of tiny new toys to search for. I set up a bowling ally in the hallway. I cleaned out our local Michaels arts and crafts store of their foam sticky shapes and set up a table with butcher paper, crayons, and other art supplies for puppet making. I went wild with streamers in an effort to transform our home. Needless to say, my perfect party was already racking up a hefty bill. And I hadn't even done the party bags yet.

Then I invited close to twenty kids, not wanting to leave out any of my sons friends from church, preschool, or the neighborhood. And since four-year-olds don't exactly have hopping social calendars, all of them were able to make it. Oh, and did I mention I also had a two-year old and was five months pregnant at the time?

Since I am a crazy, detail-oriented hyper-planner, the party went well and everyone had a blast. Everyone except for me. Sure, I was glad everything went smoothly and, although it was noisy and only semi-under control, no-one got hurt. But by the time the games, crafts, and cake-eating were done I was a sweaty, frazzled, pregnant mess. Gift opening sent me over the edge as children clamored over me to give Energy their presents, and Energy tore them all open in the middle of a huge mass of tiny bodies before I could make note of which toy came from which friend. When the parents finally came to take their tots home (some of them stayed to help out, but since it was a small space, the extra bodies only added to the melee), I was so glad it was finally over.

At the end of the day when it was all cleaned up and the kids were in bed,  I realized I had spent a small fortune and almost two months of my life planning the perfect party. (I didn't yet know about the additional two months I would spend cleaning rice from various nooks and crannies of my kitchen where I had set up the rice bin). And though Energy had fun, my husband and I did not. I didn't understand until several years later that Energy would have been just as happy with something simple. The desire to plan an amazing, over-the-top birthday party came only from my own obsessive need for perfection.

Well, party planning season has arrived again and I'm currently in the throes of birthday plans for Plucky. Spring sees the bulk of our family's birthdays and, though there are several close together, I have learned a few things over the years that have made the concentrated party planning more manageable. I share them with you now in the hopes that they will be of some benefit to you, whether in planning your own kids' parties, or perhaps just so you can laugh at my expense.


Number One: Kids don't care about the details. You know those super-cute parties on Pinterest that make you feel supremely unworthy when you consider your own parties? Well, you are in luck because your kids won't notice the decorations no matter how cute they are. I'm really glad Pinterest was not around to make me feel inferior while I was planning parties for Energy, Mellow and Bright. I stand in awe at the many creative and talented people who plan beautiful parties, but I'm not that great at it and frankly, I don't have the time. So, even if you have the talent to create a Pinterest-worthy party, be aware that your kids won't notice or care. (But, if you want to do it as a creative outlet for yourself or to impress your kids' friends' parents, go for it!)

To illustrate my point, please see this amazing kitty adoption party I found after planning the one I'll be throwing for Plucky this weekend. Seriously? I bow to the creator of that party, but I do not have time for that. Now here are pictures from the party I just finished setting up for: 

Visit to the vet after adopting their kitty--Mellow helped set this up

 Decorating their kitty carriers

 Outside relay race, mouse hunt game and face painting to be set up in the morning

Now, I'm happy with what we've planned for tomorrow, but I have to admit it's pretty lame compared to the party I found online. So I will repeat this mantra to myself: I refuse to feel inferior because of my sub-par party decorations. Plucky and her friends will still have fun and that's all that matters.


Number Two: Create a budget and stick to it. I've found that once I have a theme in mind and start hammering out the details, it is very difficult for me to stop buying stuff that will turn the party in my head into reality. I learned after that first party to plan wisely where I want to spend my (okay, my husband's) money. Again, kids don't care about the details. Even if you find the perfect centerpiece or paper ware to go along with your theme, the kids won't be any wiser if you forgo it in favor of a pinata. (I do have to say here that pinatas are super easy and always worth the money because kids love them! If you make your own pinata, I don't want to know about it.)

Putting together party bags can also be quite pricey, even if they are filled with junk from the dollar store. But here's the thing about party bags: my kids play with the stuff inside them for about ten minutes. Then the party bag sits on their dresser for a few weeks until the baby comes and spills it all over the place, destroying whatever was inside. Then I secretly throw it away and no-one ever notices. So spend wisely (or don't spend) on goody bags.

Number Three: Kids don't need a party every year. I wish I had realized this sooner. Energy got an elaborately planned birthday party every year from the time he turned one until his eighth birthday (with the exception of year three, probably due to the arrival of his first sibling). As the years turned and our kids multiplied, it became apparent that having lots of kids means nearly year-round party planning. In favor of keeping my sanity and paying our mortgage, we decided to cut back on birthday parties.

We dubbed years five through eight as reasonable years for planned parties. After year eight, we would go somewhere fun as a family (think Coldstone or Chuck E. Cheese) instead of throwing a party, and they could bring a friend or two along. But there would be no invitations, no games, no party bags, and no theme. Last year we learned that sleepovers are way easier to plan than regular birthday parties. All it takes is lots of junk food, a new movie or two and a few rented video games. (For boys, that is--I suspect it may be an entirely different story with a girlie sleepover, which we have yet to attempt).

Number Four: Have a detailed party plan that includes time to open gifts. It may be considered tacky to open gifts at a party, but I've learned I need to include it anyway. Kids don't understand tacky. They just want to see their friend open the gift they've picked out. And if you don't have a plan, you will end up with a chaotic mess of kids presenting their gifts to the birthday child and insisting they open it right as their parents are arriving to pick them up. A good old-fashioned game of Duck, Duck, Goose works well for this, with each child holding their gift and giving it to the birthday kid when they are picked to be Goose.

I also plan out my parties in fifteen-minute increments. Very Type A, I know. But it works. I like to have a new activity start every fifteen minutes, since attention spans are short when there are lots of hyper kids crowded together. Sometimes we don't get to all of my planned diversions, so I always make a prioritized list of which ones I'll cut if needed. In my experience, it's better to be over-prepared than to have a cake-filled bunch of kids bouncing around with a half hour till their parents show up and nothing to do in the meantime.

Number Five: When all else fails, put on a silly hat and adopt an Australian accent (or make your husband do it) The absolute best party we ever threw was a jungle safari party for Mellow's sixth birthday. I had a jungle obstacle course set up in the yard (party planning became much easier once we got a house!), which the kids were led through by their personal safari tour guide (my husband wearing a Hawaiian shirt and a crazy hat). They filled jungle safari journals with stickers to make note of animal sightings along the way. The safari ended with an alligator pinata, resting in the mud underneath my kids' favorite climbing tree.

But the best part of that party was witnessing the kids faces as my awesome husband filled his role as crazy tour guide. An accountant by day, his naturally creative side tends to get stifled at work. So he let it all out and put on quite a show that day. He was so funny that Mellow's friends talked about his cool dad for the rest of the year. Making a fool of yourself is always a big hit with kids.


So, there you have it. Five party planning tips I wish I had known twelve years ago. May they bring you joy (or at least release you from unnecessarily high expectations), in your own party planning endeavors!

Rejection & Resilience--Schooled by a Tenacious Toddler

The Pinewood Derby: an emotional roller coaster masquerading as fun, where dads boys aged 8-10 years build wooden cars in the hopes of crushing their friends the competition on race day.

My family recently attended the Pinewood Derby, where we supported Mellow and my husband in their efforts to bring home the gold. We have been participating in said derby for several years now, ever since Energy turned 8, and each time proves yet another test of character for my boys. The weeks leading up to the event are spent in giddy anticipation as the boys plan, design and build the most amazing car the world has ever seen. The day of, however, often culminates in tears when their perfect car fails to bring home the gold.

This year was pretty typical; that is, at the end of the event, our scout was in tears. Despite the fact that Mellow's car actually did quite well, taking second in his Den and third overall, the only thing that stuck in his brain was that he didn't win. Consequently, he left the event believing he was a failure.

My husband and I tried to cheer him up. I told him about my disappointing week of rejection in my writing endeavors, thinking that since misery typically loves company, perhaps this knowledge would make him feel better. But he didn't care. Then my husband pointed out the fact that, since he was the one who actually did the cutting and physical building of the car, maybe he was worthless for making such  lousy car. To this statement, Mellow agreed wholeheartedly (a very different reaction from what my husband had been hoping for), but still refused to be comforted.

Mellow calmed down eventually, but was never able to enjoy the second place trophy he brought home because he was dwelling so heavily on his loss. Mellow's reaction to his perceived failure, combined with my own despondency after a week of fruitless toil along the road to publication of my novel, got me thinking about rejection and how we handle it (or fail to handle it, as the case may be).

The thought has occurred to me more than once that perhaps I should give up on my dreams, since they sometimes seem so impossible to attain. But I have never been a quitter. Afraid and hesitant to take on challenges in the first place, yes, but not a quitter. Once I commit to something, I have a very hard time giving it up. So when I first decided to venture down the publishing path, it took a lot of courage for me to even admit I wanted to try. And I can't give up now.

So it seems I need to be taught a lesson in resilience and, as it happens, I have found the perfect teacher living right under my own roof. He is with me almost constantly, and he is less than 3 feet tall. Yes, my teacher is Caboose.

Toddlers have to be the most persistent creatures on the planet, and if you've ever tried to keep one from doing something they're bent on doing, then you know what I mean. If they've got their sights set on something, they won't give up on attaining it until the object of their desire is actually removed from their presence.  And sometimes not even then.

For Caboose, his object of desire is the kitchen table. Climbing on it, that is. And since I can't physically remove our kitchen table from his presence, he never stops trying to get on it, no matter how many times he falls off, or how many times I snatch him away just before he succeeds. Often as I pull him off the table after he has eluded my so-called clever attempts at stopping him, I think how frustrating it must be for him to get so close and then have to start all over. Surely he'll soon realize it's a fruitless endeavor and give up, right? Wrong. As long as his goal is in sight, he will never stop reaching for it.

I've realized I can learn quite a lot from my tenacious toddler if I will let him teach me. Young children  absolutely never give up--defeats don't deter them because they exist only in the present.  If they can see a way to reach their goals, and sometimes even if they can't, they persevere. Because their failures are forgotten the moment they become history and the future is an incomprehensible concept, the only thing that's real for them is now. And now holds all the possibilities.

The take-away for me then, is that I can't let failures taint my future prospects. That's not to say I don't learn from my failures, but failure should not be a reason to quit trying. Caboose has learned a great many things from his failed table-climbing attempts: only do it when mom's not looking; step stools are portable and should be utilized whenever possible; if you push really hard on the kitchen chairs, they will move to where you want them; never attempt to get off the table without first looking to make sure there is a chair nearby; and other such useful tidbits. His failures have not stopped him, rather they've taught him how to modify future attempts to ensure a higher rate of success.

The challenge for me now is to take this lesson to heart and apply it in my own endeavors. And to teach this concept to my older children who have lost some of the tenacity of their youth. Now is the time to dream big, and now is the time to follow those dreams even when they seem impossible to reach. Failure should never be a reason to quit trying.

I resolve to live in the present, because the present is what holds the magic of possibility.