A Spontaneous Moment

This past Friday night, hubby and I and our oldest son - the 5 year old - were playing around, trying to sit on each others laps. Hubby sat down on chair in front of computer, I sat on hubby and then our oldest sat on my lap. We were stacked like a couple of blocks. I then thought wouldn't this make a funny picture but I couldn't get to my camera, being "stacked" between the boys as I was. Looking at the computer, I realized that it had a cool feature called "Photo Booth". So I activated it, and using our Macbook's built in web cam, starting taking pictures. My 5 year old thought that this was the coolest most hilarious thing because not only did the computer "take" our picture (with virtual flashbulb), after each picture you could see the actual photo taken, like in a real life photo booth. And so my 5 year old went crazy and pushed the button and the Macbook took picture after picture...and of course we started going a little nuts striking poses and making faces. Who cared that we weren’t prepped to take photos with our wild, mussy hair and extremely casual clothes. We even pulled the 3 year old son into the fun. And few seconds later, I stepped out and then came back with our 8 month old son, and the fun continued and would have continued if it hadn't been time for bed. It was such a good time.

There was lots of laughter and funny faces, which in the moment warmed my heart because I realized that for the last several weeks had been a mostly stressful, serious time for our family. The 5 year old has been dealing with rejection, teasing, meanness and loneliness at school while I've been dealing with being overwhelmed and tired with all the motherhood and household duties along with financial stresses and school worries (due to my son's stresses) and dear hubby was dealing with the same issues as me just replace family business with with heavy work responsibility. A mainly serious time marked with anxiety, short tempers, frustration and a bit of crying (from both kiddos and The Mommy).

That moment - our “photo session” - was the first time in awhile that wasn't marked with worries, frustration or discouragement. A pure fun time. Just 5 minutes of stress-free pure happy.

So much fun to hear sincere, boisterous laughter coming from my 5 year old and to see my 3 year make the funny poses (he was cracking himself up) with his magnetic school box and to see huge grins on the faces of The Parents (as seen through the photos we took). Mommy and Daddy are smiling. Really, smiling. Wow! The little 8 month old just took it all in stride, as he usually does.

In the midst of the serious busyness of our life we had a spontaneous five minute moment of pure, unalduterated joy.

Nice.

Here’s hoping for more of these moments. We need them.

Have you had any spontaneous moments of joy lately? What were they? Please share, because I would love to hear them. Mine warmed my heart, I’m sure hearing yours will do the same.