<p>What is your total contentment moment?</p>
<p>Walking after dark, listening to Cinema Paradiso (ala Chris Botti) on the iPod, after a storm, the sky goes from indigo east to dark blue west, with periodic faraway lightening flashes (but I’m safe). So peaceful.</p>
<p>I have a garfield shirt that says on the front: Happiness is…</p>
<p>and: doing nothing at all on the back.</p>
<p>I had to laugh when I saw the title of your thread. </p>
<p>for me, probably any time spent alone with my boyfriend with nobody else around. It’s always so hectic when ever we are with people so when everyone is gone it’s nice and quiet!! We went for a walk, just the two of us, on the beach at night in Myrtle Beach and that was totally perfect, until he attemped to push me in the ocean 
The other week we took a birthday present to my cousin’s baby who turned 1 and when we came back home we laid out on our hammock together just looking up at the sky as it was getting dark and that felt perfect too, until we got up and he got up first and I fell off as it flipped!!oops!! Last night we hung out in the family room just the two of us watching a Simon and Garfunkel concert on DVD pretty loud and that felt perfect too. Can anyone tell I’m completely in love, lol.</p>
<p>;)</p>
<p>Happiness is getting a long, chatty phone call from S, who is a freshman in college.</p>
<p>Haven’t gotten the long chatty phone call yet, so for now Happiness is the short “Really quick mom . . . ?” phone call I get from DD. And the “Thank you” email.</p>
<p>My favorite (well second favorite ;)) activity is going up to my listening room early on Sunday mornings with the NY Times and a fresh cup of coffee to spin some vinyl.</p>
<p>Moment of happiness? or contentment?</p>
<p>I was deeply contented last night, around 3 AM, when I woke up because there’d been a power failure, and I took the dogs out, grabbed the flashlight, made a cup of tea, and lay in bed reading with the flashlight and a sleeping dog on each side.</p>
<p>On the other hand, I am HAPPY that my children are beginning their post-college lives healthy and gainfully employed–even though they’re encountering conflict and worries.</p>
<p>Happiness is family. Whether it is extended family gatherings or having my kids and husband together for an evening at home. Contentment, happiness, peacefulness, those family times together.</p>
<p>Happiness is the first cold front of the season blowing in after a long hot summer. Cloudy, gusty cool winds, leaves and pine needles flying, dog barking and running in circles…lol! We always grab a lawn chair and sit outside enjoying nature’s air conditioning for a change. Then I feel compelled to run out and buy mums and pumpkins and Halloween scarecrows… </p>
<p>Only one more month!! :)</p>
<p>I just had a very exciting moment of extreme happiness:</p>
<p>Just went out to my car to head home after rehearsal and turned on the radio and heard… MY SON SINGING!!!</p>
<p>His band’s “single” was (quite unexpectedly) playing on the radio!! I yelled over to the two ladies still in the church parking lot and cranked that puppy up (they were played on an “alternative rock” station. Not your typical “church” music, LOL!). They seemed to like it.</p>
<p>What a rush!</p>
<p>:) :)</p>
<p>WAY cool, churchmusicmom!</p>
<p>Thanks! I am still grinning foolishly…</p>
<p>There were those times throughout my kids’ life when, for a moment, for 5 minutes, for whatever length of time, everything outside our world stopped—those moments in time that are frozen and I can recall like they were yesterday. Taking D to the baby swing at the park for the first time at about 6 months and her giggling uncontrollably…picking up the girls at their afterschool care when they were little, that day when I stopped at the park and we all rolled down the grassy hill (me in my work duds and all)… this June, sitting in the huge basketball arena, watching my D up giving her valedictorian speech–when, for those 2 minutes, there was no one else in the world…or having her end a phone call on her cell phone now that she’s at school and ending it, “I love you, mommy”, no matter who else is in the room to hear… that’s some good stuff.</p>
<p>Wow, that is great, chuchmusicmom. My son thanked me for the cookies I sent and said everyone loved them. I’ll be very happy to see him for Family Weekend. When I need to laugh, I watch “Best in Show”.</p>
<p>I ditto Idmom-- I LOVE those cool, gusty days, when the air and light tell you that fall is here!</p>
<p>One of my Happiness Is moments was a long time ago, but I’ll never forget it–</p>
<p>It was the sound of the wheels of the little lucite bassinet rolling down the hall in the middle of the night to my room when my son was born. I was breastfeeding, so the nurse would wheel him down to me every few hours during the night. It seems like I was never asleep, because I could hear the little cart rolling down the entire length of the hall in the dark. I couldn’t wait to have him back and hold him. It was perfect.</p>
<p>…a warm puppy</p>
<p>Sorry, I couldn’t resist. Aw, I miss Peanuts!</p>
<p>I’m going to state the obvious – holding the babies for the first time in my arms, and every time after that including now, even though they are all bigger than me they still sit on my lap sometimes.</p>
<p>My daughter did that just this morning (15 1/2 yrs. old). Mommy bliss! <3
I’m sure you all agree.</p>
<p>I do, agree, AnudduhMom, and I am jealous. Both of my babies are off to college, so no hugs from them.</p>
<p>Happiness is hearing they’re doing okay at school.
Happiness is opening my email and they both have messages for me. I don’t care that one of them is a couple of sentences long and the other is three.</p>
<p>All those things everyone else said. Doubleplay, I particularly liked your description of the colors of the nighting sky.</p>
<p>churchmusicmom: Cool beyond words.</p>
<p>Happiness is those moments I remember that I am alive and not an automoton. Like right now; I’m off from school because of Jewish holidays. The cicadas are sounding their treble symphony. Sun is pouring in from the bay window in the family room, and there is nothing I have to do. </p>
<p>I am talking with all of you and feeling the miracle of being here.</p>
<p>happiness is going to the beach for the first time in a new season
coming out of the commuter train station onto a busy Manhattan street and seeing so much humanity all jumbled together
seeing the Red Rocks of Sedona for the first time
getting an unexpected call form D last night where she described how her first of the year solo teaching went (TA for an intro to Music class at Wash U) and how it felt like such a right decision when she described showing them Beethoven’s handwriting, what music “looks like”,etc. She seems so happy and thats a perfect moment for me.
Picking red ripe organically grown tomatoes in my little backyard and eating them right off the vine,warm from the sun.</p>
<p>Uh – brown paper packages tied up with string.</p>
<p>DMD77: How did you make the tea if the power was out?? (See Post #6.)</p>
<p>For me: Being greeted by two doggies who are both ecstatic to see me, every night after work.</p>
<p>VeryHappy: I made the tea using our gas stove. Which I lit with an old-fashioned match, since the electric spark was also out. When we built the house, I insisted on one toilet that was non-electric flush and a gas stove. Happiness is knowing you can have a cup of tea in a power failure. (We also have a gas hot water heater… but the pump is electric. That was dumb.)</p>