Day 7 Pleasure Revolution- Simple Pleasures Too

Speaking of simple pleasures... Here are but a few of today’s.

• Waking up with my gorgeous lover after a sweet reunion.
• Being then visited at our camp site by my husband who lets me know my birthday girl is waking up and needs a birthday song sung to her.
• Breakfast with my entire family; Kelly, Chris, Michael, Lily, Rosy and Ayla.
• Fishing in the morning.
• Walking round a lake in a dress bought in Santa Monica and cowboy boots and loving my own resilience, adaptability and willingness to roll with life as it comes.
• Building a sweat lodge with my family, digging a hole for the rocks, collecting rocks to heat in the fire, watching as my men collect cedar boughs, wood to fuel the fire and make the structure. Listening to my children problem solve and both co-operate and bicker.
• Waiting for our friends Pam and James to arrive with their children, another birthday surprise for Lily whose birthday wish was to have an end of summer camping trip with her family and her best friend Sage’s family.
• Preparing dinner on a camp stove with a glass of wine and wonderful conversation.
• Listening to 6 children and one husband sing “We all come from the Mother”, as they sit naked inside the sweat lodge while the rest of us sit round the fire delivering hot rocks and water to pour on them when needed.
• A bed time ritual which wet smooth and had lots of little girls snuggled in with their good friends.
• Sitting round the campfire with my teenage daughter and 5 other adults. Talking about various drugs, talking about their effects, both the desirable and the long/short term undesirable.
• Ending the night with hugs and stumbling off to our beds to snuggle in the cold evening.
• Spending the last day of Summer celebrating the birth of my middle child, Lily Rain Raabis, who was born in our living room in Slave Lake Alberta, 11 years ago today.
• Being blessed with support, love, commitment and understanding.
• Simple pleasures.

HAPPY 11th BIRTHDAY LILY RAIN RAABIS!

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(Lily in Monterey California this summer)

“What do you remember of you family holidays as a child?” is the question in 12 days journal #160