Happy! Happy! Joy! Joy!

I have a few friends who knit and blog and we've decided to embark on a blog project that has nothing to do with knitting. We're going to take turns coming up with a topic every Thursday and we each have to blog about it by the end of that day and post links to each other's blogs so that people can see our different perspectives on the same topic.

Check out the backstory about how the project was conceived and how we all came together.

Here are the other blogs:
Froggie Knits Like Crazy
Charmingly Random
Desperate Madness

This week's topic comes from Desperate Madness: What is the happiest moment that you can remember in your life?

This topic was asking for another Sondheim quote! Once again, from "Into the Woods" in a song called "Moments in the Woods."

"Oh, if life were made of moments,
Even now and then a bad one!
But if life were only moments,
Then you'd never know you had one."

I thought of this song because I feel that I have so many happy moments in my life that it is hard to list just one. However, it takes times of unhappiness or when nothing is really happening in order to make such moments stand out. That they're something I can look back on when I need a good smile or laugh.

Of course, there will be cliche things that I have to mention, such as my engagement, wedding and the birth of my two sons. There is more than meets the eye for me personally when it comes to these moments.

*On my wedding day, there was a point before everything started happening where my husband and I got to see each other in our wedding gear without the crowd and excitement surrounding us. I think people would only get to see this moment if they watch our DVD. (My stepmother-in-law and my dad were the only family members who got to witness this in person.) My husband was facing the other direction and I was instructed to tap him on the shoulder. He turned around and saw me in my dress with my hair done and makeup freshly applied. His smile was so genuine and he made me feel so beautiful at that moment that I was laughing and crying at the same time. He looked so handsome in his tux and I was so excited that we would officially become husband and wife in a matter of hours. I know it's not customary for brides and grooms to see each other before the wedding, but it is different in Orthodox Judaism. Normally, we would have waited until the badeken (veiling) ceremony but everyone was nagging us to have pictures done together before things got crazy. We still got to have our special moment of awe and the badeken still was amazing. I was laughing and smiling from all the excitement of that.

*When my younger son was born, I was expecting him to be a girl (I was pretty much convinced of it, as were most of my family members and friends) up until the moment the doctor placed him on my stomach and told me he was a boy. I was so thrilled and surprised that I started crying tears of joy. I'm not discrediting the excitement of my older son's birth, but I had a feeling he'd be a boy in the beginning.

Aside from these happy moments, here are more that I'd like to share (not in any order, necessarily):

*Making it into my first and only play in high school. I felt like Elle Woods when she saw her name on Professor Callahan's list.

*The first time I won an award at a speech tournament. It was during sophomore year. Although it was 3rd place, it still felt great!

*Winning another award during junior year of high school for something I didn't expect at all. I had assistant directed two plays during that year and received a theater service award. Yes, an award for doing something I enjoyed. It was cool to receive such an honor.

*The day my sister and I waited outside for hours to get front row tickets to see "Rent."

*Meeting celebrities (the best being Adam Pascal).

*When I worked at a Chinese restaurant and gave a cocktail fan to a girl with developmental and physical disabilities. The smile on her face brightened my whole day and I still think about it and smile.

*This past New Year's Eve, just playing board games with friends but laughing really hard over the craziest things.

*Receiving an e-mail from my older son's teacher telling me that she thought he was smart enough to test for kindergarten in the fall, even though he missed the deadline.

*Finding out that my older son's speech therapist (at his school in NJ) was able to do auditory-verbal therapy. That was something we really wanted for him at the time.

*While I was in Israel, the night I was in an auditorium full of Jewish people from all over the world who all knew the same songs.

*Finding out that I was pregnant with my older son and having it confirmed by my doctor.

*Seeing "In the Heights" last year and getting to meet the actors afterward.

*Receiving a book I really wanted in the mail for free because I won it! :)

There are so many big and little happy moments that I'd be writing this blog for a year if I listed them all. I feel fortunate to have so much about which to be happy. I know I'll continue to have moments that I can list in blog entries like this. I might even make it into a regular weekly entry. When I was in England, I'd write 5 good things about each day so that I could look back and smile. I don't see any reason why I couldn't do that on a weekly basis. I know my BFF tried it for a while and I hope she'll get back into the habit of doing it again too. It's definitely nice to be able to cherish the happy moments whenever possible!