The Joy of (Rocky) Music in the Morning

The Rocky statue at the Philadelphia Museum of Art!

Mornings in my house can be rough.  Really rough.  Jelly Bean, Rosie, and I are all night owls, so our mornings (okay, my mornings) usually begin with multiple hits of the snooze button.  And because I'm always paranoid about oversleeping, it's not just the clock by my bed, but also the alarm on my phone, that add to the cacophony in the morning.

Once I finally drag myself out of bed, then it's time to get the kiddos up.  Rosie is the challenge...she's a deep sleeper and does not enjoy getting out of bed!  And honestly, it doesn't get much better once we are all awake and vertical.  Between getting dressed, making lunches, gathering everything, and trying to get out of the door on time, our mornings can be stressful. (And yes, I've read all the articles about prepping everything the night before.  I always manage to do that before the first day of school, but by day 3 I'm back to leaving everything to the morning!)

So with all this stress, it's important to try and find the joy.  Music is always a great source of joy for me, and especially so in the morning!  Today it definitely did the trick.  Today was field day at school, so I wanted to have a little fun with waking up the kiddos.  What better way to wake them up on field day than with the Rocky movie classic, "Gonna Fly Now"?  (You can listen to the song here.  C'mon, you know you want to!)  I started off standing in the hallway, loudly announcing, "It's time to wake up!!!  It's Field Day!!!" and then I played the song.  Never mind that neither of the kiddos have seen the movie...it's still a great inspirational "get your butt out of bed" kind of song!  And amazingly, it worked!  They popped out of bed much more quickly than normal, and it definitely started the day off right.

Mornings in my house have the potential to be a decidedly non-joyful time of day.  So thank you Rocky, for bringing a bit of joy to our morning today.  You revved up the kiddos for a fun day at field day and revved me up for an exciting day of sitting in front of a computer all day at the office (where I listened to showtunes to keep the joy going!).

What kind of music brings you joy?  I'd love to hear from you!  (And please feel free to leave tips for me on how to make mornings run more smoothly! I'd especially love advice that doesn't require much extra effort on my part, lol.)