Inspired today by two things...

First - it's so amazing the curiosity of a child. They see things through such a different lens. And the sparkle of a smile this morning from one such child brightened my day. This little person typically does, because he is truly a neat kid, but in particular watching him interact not only with other kids but just on his own - the curiosity of youth is just so amazing.

Then, I was shopping at Rainbow after church and the little old woman came up to me. I don't quite have a clue why she picked me because there were quite a few others around. She fairly ran me down with her cart in the meat section. But as I spoke with her I understood a bit more why. She explained she has macular degeneration, something I am fairly familiar with as a close friend of our family has been suffering with this. Anyhow she was looking for canned vegetables and wondered which aisle they were in. She then also asked if I minded walking over there with her and reading the labels as she was looking for french cut green beans and in particular she was interested in what brand was on sale. I explained that the delmonte was on sale and that the roundy's was too. I tend to like the roundy's label and it happened to be a few cents more. She looked at me and said, "dear, a bean's a bean". Yep, I guess a bean is a bean - particularly if you are talking about canned french style green beans. She then thanked me and warned me not to go out in the sun without protective eyewear.

So in honor of these two people today -here are a few things that brought me joy this week:

1. That little bit of chocolate in the bottom of a Drumstick™ ice cream cone as a reward for sitting through a long meeting.
2. Getting into my car and having the defroster and the windshield wiper fluid working enough so that I don't have to get out and scrape my front windshield.
3. The timer on the left turn stoplight on glenn road and 61 seems to always know when I'm running late for church and turns green immediately when I approach.
4. We have a fabulous group of musicians at the church I attend (thealley.org) and in particular the combination of Paula and Brian's voices today on a new song we sang, was joy-filled.
5. Getting a coupon in the mail from my friends at Mastertech that they will do an oil change and rotate my tires for the low price of 19.95 when I was just thinking I needed to have both done soon and didn't know if I had enough money saved to do both.
6. A practically free photoshoot and the idea that I will soon have new photos to play with at work.

And of course, hearing that dad's test results were in the clear. Always good when prayers are answered.