Lucky.

I love the city of Kingston, especially the downtown area. I'm not really a fan of malls, or box stores. I like the unique shops with all their hidden treasures inside. I like supporting the smaller businesses. Downtown Kingston has many stores like that (and also some not so small stores!), so that's typically where I head. I'm also in love with the abundance of limestone buildings in the waterfront/downtown area. I enjoy meandering up and down the slightly hilly street window shopping. We have a few favourite stores that we go to when we head into the city... Tara's Natural Foods, Tribal Voices, Minotaur, Ten Thousand Villages (not a store on a small scale - but one that is very worthy and has many, many amazing treasures), The Rocking Horse (okay, that's mostly the kids loving that one!) and... the LCBO downtown. Haha. I always make sure to stop in there for Kyle because there are always so many different beers in that LCBO than we get here in Belleville. Today was no exception... I came home with plenty of good beers. The other store I enjoy stopping in is not downtown, but in the dreaded mall. I absolutely 100% must stop in at Lush whenever we venture into Kingston. I am always low on something - soap, body wash, body cream, foot cream etc etc, so it's mandatory. I am a huge lover of Lush.

While we were visiting The Rocking Horse today the boys were eyeing up these new Beyblades that their friend Dustin has recently started collecting. We have plenty of the old school Beyblades, but apparently these new ones are better? At any rate, they were oohing and ahhing over them, so I decided to treat them each to one. Oh wow! You should have seen their reaction! I would have thought they'd won the lottery with all the hugging and the 'best Mum EVER'ing and the wanting to buy ME something with their own money. Silly boys. Seeing as I bought the boys each something, I couldn't leave Rhianna out. She picked out some accessories for her wooden doll house, and then picked up some more furniture with her own money that she got from her Uncle & Aunt recently. They were so beyond excited. Oh, the simple things in life.

This was a perfectly beautiful day. The weather was incredible. The sun was shining brightly. The snow is almost gone. The kids were wonderfully behaved. I sang on the top of my lungs with Rhianna on our drive to and back from Kingston (every second song being a Kesha song since two of my three kids are obsessed with her!). The geese came back! There was another Robin in our front yard. It was just an all around happy day.

I am very, very fortunate in my life. I feel very blessed for everything I have, both with friends and family as well as material things. As I was driving in the van on the 401 I just kept seeing images of the destruction in Japan... the broken roads, the disaster of what used to be people's homes, the fires, the explosions, the water and sadness. I feel so helpless just donating money. I wish there was something more I could do. It really made me step back and take a good, long, hard look at my life. I am lucky, lucky, lucky!