Ordinary, simple pleasures

I had one of the best weekends.

"Wow, what happened?" you might ask.

Nothing spectacular, just small, simple pleasures.

MandyE and I have often spoken about how the ordinary can be so fabulous sometimes because it's what you've dreamed of for so long. Normal, family stuff, nothing exciting, just pleasure in the ordinary.

1. just finished supper of home-made vegetable and lentil soup with buttered garlic bread. Mmmmm.
2. yesterday for lunch, we ALL had baked beans on toast, one of my favourite cold weather lunches. First time for the kids and they loved it. Connor is apparently a boy who relishes his food like his mother as he is also doing the "mmmm" thing. Too sweet to see in an 18-month-old.
3. 1:1 shopping yesterday with Kendra for some shoes (still no winter clothes in the shops and we're having lots of cold weather) and some pretty office-type stuff as I decided "life is too short to not have a pretty workspace".
4. reading comments on some of the Mondo Beyondo threads. I love when a community of women support and inspire one another instead of the backbiting we seem to see so often.
5. being inspired by the Mondo Beyondo comments, especially by the sorts of people who are so different to me (artists, creatives, etc.).
6. doing my prompts and having aha moments as I wrote (typed) my initial Mondo Beyondo list. there is such freedom for a person like me to know that tomorrow I will print it (I purposely don't have a printer at home), put it in a beautiful blue envelope (I'm into prettying my life this year - more on another post) and forget about it. I know that half the power of creating awesomeness in your life is simply to write it down.
7. I have vision boards from years ago that I made and "forgot about" and they have come to pass.
8. an unexpected weekend sale popping into my inbox (I get most sales on a Wed or Thurs right after my newsletter goes out)
9. had a meeting after church with the pastor in charge of ministry work and I am officially starting my ministry in Feb. I'm starting to get excited about impacting real, live, in-the-flesh people again. For too long, it feels like I have been hiding behind my computer, blogging here and on the other blog.
10. had lunch at a coffee shop and used our fabric baby seats. I was stopped by several people asking "WHERE did you get those fabulous things?" (paraphrasing) but best of all, the babies behaved and we had a lovely lunch with everyone eating their food.
11. had a nearly 2 hour long nap this afternoon. Bliss. Connor did the same and was the happiest camper on the planet afterwards. Amazing what sleep will do.
12. hugging the babies' teddies, Thursday and Friday (that's their names), and pretending that they were telling K & C they really wanted to go sleep. Hey, it worked.
13. while I was typing this, Connor started talking in his sleep. Ba- ba- ba (like he's shooting someone?). D and I both burst out laughing.

What were your simple pleasures this weekend?

P.S. Pics taken at Lavendar Cafe in Port Elizabeth - taking pics like these is another of my simple pleasures