Annalie and I have watched this superfun video three times in a row. Now I’m off to google Kristin Andreassen. (via scrumdilly-do!)

The other day, Annalie and I went to a Chinese place for lunch. Annalie usually likes Chinese food, but she was stubbornly insisting on this day that she wanted nothing to do with rice or broccoli or water chestnuts. So I ordered her a bowl of egg drop soup.

When our food was brought to us, Annalie cautiously sniffed the soup. “It smells good, but it looks kinda gross. Hmm, maybe if I can’t see it then I’ll like it.” She slapped her hand over her eyes and brought a spoonful of soup to her mouth and took a tiny sip.

“Hey, I do like it! This is pretty good, as long as I’m not looking at it!”

“Mom, I have an idea! You should take a picture for Daddy, since he always eats egg drop soup. He would be so proud of me that I tried it and liked it.”

And then I got a great fortune in my fortune cookie. It’s really more of a truism than a fortune, but I liked it so much I didn’t care. I brought it home and taped it up in my kitchen so I can read it often and think about it.

Only you can change your life. No one can do it for you.

“We think success means being so good or so great that no one can do without us, yet a successful scholar is one whose work continues in his students long after he retires, and a successful entrepreneur is one whose company chugs merrily along while he’s taking a holiday on the beach. A successful parent is one who, eventually, doesn’t have to be there.

“Success is a movement into invisibility. Success is decreasing so that others may increase. Success is a seed dying in the ground and bearing fruit upwards. Success is becoming dispensable. The successful man is the one who will not be missed.”

—Peter J. Leithart, in the June 2009 Touchstone Magazine