Three things to smile about! atleast around our place

1.

I LOVE this photo. Can you even tell what it is?
I know I take some fascinating photos eh? If you guessed, "a pile of dirt" - you're right! Dark, wet, healthy, wonderful soil. Home of my future garden. It is funny how it took a few weeks of unrelenting cold and heavy snowfalls to bury this earth, yet a Chinook rolled in last night and in less then a day it is half melted. I've never seen such a melt down before, but I'm sure loving it. It's been nice to spend the day NOT shoveling.

Seeing that beautiful brown dirt makes me want to grab a shovel (but NOT a SNOW SHOVEL) and plant something. Did I once say that I "never wanted to garden again?" Hmm. I can hardly recall that now.

2.

We've been working hard on potty training Sam these days. He's done pretty well so far. (it's amazing what success you get with a handful of cheerios, and gumballs for a reward) We're feeling a little hopeful that soon, fingers crossed, having TWO kids in diapers will be a thing of the past!

Though I do have to say that cleaning the bathroom is a whole new experience now. Yikes!

3.

My Christmas gift to John arrived in the mail today. Back in the spring I'd posted about a maple syrup experiment we did with some trees in our yard. A Day in our Lives!: Truly Canadian Eh!!
We basically boiled the sap down and made pure ORGANIC syrup. It was delicious, all 4 ounces of it! Since then, John has been fascinated with the "tapping" process and is determined to mine the sap from all of our maples. He's even eyeing some trees further down the block as well. I had been looking for some authentic sap buckets and spiles for days leading up to Christmas, wanting to give John a great gift. No luck though. Those things are hard to find here on the prairie. One last effort, phone call to my awesome, clever, helpful and sometimes slightly crazy (I fear) brother who knows eBay like nobodies business...and, oi la we've got buckets. Thanks for coming through for us as always Chad!

Now, when our neighbors start complaining about the buckets John has hooked up to all of their trees I'll just tell them it is my trixy, password stealing, oh so funny, brother's fault. Take it up with him! Speaking of HIM, my brother's family recently returned from a week long trip to Disney land! CHEMT_

3 (and a little bit).
sigh...Disneyland. Now, THAT makes me smile too!