Happy 101 - Happy 2010

Endurance Granny bestowed the Happy 101 to me recently and I'm supposed to go through and list ten things that make me happy. This seems like an appropriate post to start the new year off as well.

My family - especially my husband and my son. Although they both are capable of driving me totally crazy (for very different reasons), I do most certainly love my boys and really miss them when they're not around. I also love the special relationship that they have together, it makes me very happy to see my husband as a loving and caring father. I'm also very blessed to have a wonderful relationship with my mom, who is probably my best friend. Although we certainly had our differences during "the teenage years", she and I now have a great relationship and she's one of the first people I want to share my joys, achievements, frustrations, and sorrows with.

My pets - specifically my puppy Molly, cat Sushi and horse Diego. I love my furry four-legged "children" and each for their special qualities that make me laugh. Just spending time with them allows me to destress and appreciate the more simple things in life. I'm a sucker for pets, scratches, cuddles and belly-rubs, and they all know it.

Riding - This past year has certainly brought challenges and I've had to evaluate my riding like I never have before. Learning to deal with my fear issues has been very educational for me, and I'm proud of myself for the successful steps that I have been taking. Riding has always been such a huge part of who I am (I WAS/AM the horse crazy little girl right from the beginning), that I never had to evaluate if riding was something that I would continue to do, but rather, I just needed to figure out what I needed to do in order to find my joy of riding again. Turns out it was as simple as getting back into the saddle and having small successes, then continuing to build upon those.

Friends - I consider myself very fortunate to have a small group of very close friends, and an ever-growing larger group of online friends. I'm very much a "people-person" and enjoy communicating with a variety of people, getting to read about others lives in their blogs, make new friends, offer advice, and learn from peoples' questions and challenges. My email and blog-role are a part of my daily life and I genuinely miss those connections when I'm offline for any length of time.

Cooking - yeah, I like to cook. I don't particularly like to bake (although I can for the most part), I just don't have the patience to measure and closely follow a recipe. Cooking for me is more about finding a recipe that sounds good, figuring out which of the ingredients I may or may not have on hand, throwing it all together, plus and minus the various substitutions I'm making (this is pretty standard) and then, thankfully, usually very much enjoying the finished product.

Technology - I kind of have to steal this one from Funder a bit. Although I'm certainly no techno-wizard, and I'm definitely a "PC", I do appreciate the advances in technology that our society has made. I'm old enough to remember and have used C:/ (oh yeah) and the old Lotus based spreadsheets and word processing programs. Remember black monitors with the gold or green font??? I do! Remember when we had the big 5 1/2" floppys? Yep! Things have come a long way and the ability to connect with people and accomplish tasks has improved so greatly its mind boggling. LOVE Office 2007, LOVE gmail, LOVE google reader! I will admit to still having a very old school flip phone, but an upgrade is certainly on my wish list!

Living in Reno - although I do sometimes miss the green, its not too far of a drive. I do love the stark beauty of the high desert landscape. I love living in a large valley surrounded by scenic mountain ranges. I like that we normally have 300+ sunny days a year. Reno has a lot of the "small town" feel, in that once you've lived here for a while it's easy to run into people you know, you establish relationships fairly easy, etc, but there's actually STUFF TO DO! I never seem to get bored up here, there's always something going on. I especially feel fortunate that we have so much nice riding in this area - not only a host of glorious trails to ride, but many different organized rides and activities to participate in as well.

Being independent - although I would much rather do someTHING with someONE, I do like the fact that I'm independent enough to still be perfectly content to do something by myself. I'm also proud of the fact that I can accomplish most tasks by myself.

Our remodeled house - hubby especially put a lot of time and effort into the house, it's beautiful. The colors are warm and welcoming. I love the wood floor that we picked out and how the bricks on the fireplace look after being sandblasted to remove the paint. Having the washing machine flood everything in May was extremely stressful, but the final outcome has been well worth the months of living in the bedroom. =)

My readers - okay, hokey! I mainly started this blog for myself, so I'm not the best about posting very often. I don't want it to become a chore, or something that needs to be done. But it does give me a smile every time I see I have a new follower or a new comment on a post. Thanks for being patient with me and playing along!

What about you? What are ten things that make you happy?