Slow Down and Smell the Honeysuckle

I just finished reading a post from Rita, one of my favorite bloggers. Rita has recently taken a brief break from blogging because she was thrown into a sudden substitute teaching job.  But she took time yesterday to write a post about....well, taking time to do the things that enrich our lives.

And of course to do that, we first have to figure out what those things are.

This weekend, we really took the time to do the things that make us happy.

Friday was super special because my beautiful daughter, Christine, graduated from the University of Delaware for the second time, this time with a master's degree. She was obviously pretty happy about finishing!

And we were all, including her older brother Alex, very proud of her:

The whole family--including Christine's dad and stepmother, me and Doug, and Alex and his awesome fiancee Ashleigh--gathered for the event, and then we went back to our house for some wonderful food cooked by Doug.  We were all too busy eating to take pictures, but we did get a shot of the raspberry and chocolate ganache tart before we demolished it:

The next morning, Doug and I went down to our beach house and had an absolutely wonderful time doing very little.

The weather was gorgeous, and the beach was breathtakingly beautiful:

Doug isn't a beach-lover like I am, but when it's 70 degrees and breezy, he's pretty happy to walk along with me and Jodie:

Pax was pretty happy to spend his time bird watching from the porch:

The horseshoe crabs have arrived at our little beach, and they made some crazy trails in the sand overnight when the tide was out:

This one looks like a ribbon for "Save the Horseshoe Crabs" (I swear I didn't photoshop it):

We saw a gorgeous sunset over the marsh on Saturday night:

And smelled honeysuckle on this fence every time we went out to the beach:

Rita's blog entry really made me think.

When she talks about the dilemma of spending our limited time on earth in a manner that's meaningful to us and in ways that make us happy, she admits that it's a first-world problem, a luxury not a burden.

The irony is that when we really slow down and enjoy life, the things that make us happy aren't usually first-world luxuries. They're nature's gifts and time with family and friends.  And they cost little if anything.