Smiley Things, vol. 2

Christmas time brings more reasons to smile . . . for instance when:

• a three year old opens the book I gave her, exclaims the preschooler equivalent of "omigosh" and names every one of the Disney women on the cover by name
• her slightly older brother invests every minute of the hour after he opened my gift to him putting the pieces together with the pleasure and concentration of an engineer
• their older sister hugs herself in the jacket I gave her and then continues to don the jacket throughout the evening
• friends-who-are-family know me well enough to give me the kind of gifts that I would give myself
• my "date" who initially said no to going to dinner, cancels his previous plans and rounds out our group to a foursome
• said foursome dine on glorious food and even better conversation (except for the part when the other three try to flirt with the waiter on my behalf!)
• friends care enough to want to flirt with the waiter on my behalf
• a day ends with such complete "rightness" during the holiday season