10 simple pleasures

to avoid the whole - "is that really mine or something I thought of because I read it in Bec's first", I haven't read Bec's post on this. And naturally, because give me 10 and I'll give you 20, there's 10 plus a few.

1. Fresh flowers in the house. Favourites: magnolias, tulips, lavendar, lillies. (Although I hate when they start to die, drop leaves and pollen and that manky water smell.)
2. When a song I love, that is deeply attached to a day, or an event, a moment or a season of my life, comes on to the radio. The volume is up, the voice is loud, the dancing spontaneous.
3. Cooking a new recipe, it being delicious and relatively straightforward, so becoming part of the repertoire.
4. Waking up when my body is fully rested and says "wake up" rather than the myriad ways I am woken up every other day.
5. Lying on the lounge, resting my head on Chef's leg and just being.
6. The smell of coffee brewing, even if I don't like drinking it anymore.
7. The sounds of my children
8. That silence that fills the house after the dinner, bedtime, end-of-the-day rankle ebbs away. Bliss.
9. The sound of Jasper waking in the morning - those when he just wakes and babbles happily away to his animals. In fact, any sound from Jasper. That little high pitched "ah-eegh" when he sees me, kills me every time.
10. "Mummy" when I walk through the door home from work.
11. Dinners when we first moved out of home, with L and R, M and R (then A, then S and finally J who we loved the most). Where we ate late because if I can't run on time, as if dinner parties I'm hosting are going to. Where we had nibbles, then three courses, litres of wine, chocolates and coffee and would basically eat our collective selves into an eating disorder. Or in fact, any meal with them. They are something I treasure to the core of my soul.
12. Lazy days hanging out with friends. That start mid-morning, become lunch, extend through the afternoon tea to an impromptu dinner. The kids happily playing together, us (normally us and the Doodles - our camping buddies) drinking copious amounts of tea and just talking about everything and nothing.
13. Baking.
14. Having a jar with homemade biscuits on the bench.
15. Reading the Saturday papers, with a mug of tea beside me and the sun warming my back.
16. That sensation when you lie down in bed and your entire body says "thank GOD" or when during the night you pull the doona back up over your cooled body and the warmth is instantaneous.
17. Either a fresh, warm Italian loaf with extra virgin olive oil, salt and pepper or a light French loaf with butter and honey.
18. Smelling Jasper's head
19. Oscar as he slips his arm through mine
20. Felix's cuddles