Imagine growing 8 cm’s in 2 months! Russell, one day I will ask you what that felt like. Cool man!

Now this is how you celebrate a class 4 drivers licence! A little impromptu preschool field trip complete with a sing-a-long. Take a wild guess of what we sang. 

I have been home for nearly 10 days from a conference I attended in Toronto. Life at home didn’t slow down through my absence and it has been full steam ahead on the home front. The boys are thoroughly enjoying the warmer weather and Dominic basically lives outside. Julian is also motivated to get out and go for walks but with the singular purpose of getting to the ice cream store. We were able, on the weekend, to get together with good friends and Jules spent some more time on his new bike. We all enjoyed smokies and chili on Maggie’s farm. Dom’s bike got a seat upgrade and he is striding around like a champ. Back to the conference…it was a very worthwhile early literacy conference and I came away inspired and armed with some new tools and lots of good learning. The other great thing was that I was able to do a solo tour around southern Ontario visiting as much of my family as I could. This odyssey took me from Toronto to Bracebridge to Ottawa, Wakefield and then to Kingston, Burlington and back to Toronto. The highlight was my visit with Grandma. She is well on her way to 91 and still makes the best fruit salad you can find. In fact, my affinity for fruit salad was born in her dining room thirty odd years ago! So comfortable to relax and tell stories in her unchanged living room of my youth in the company of my Aunt Susan and Uncle Chris. I then squeezed in a couple great sleeps at the family homestead in the Gatineau Hills. This was complimented by a couple of hikes through the still snow covered forest and fields with mom and dad in what would have been a lovely couple days mid-January! I can’t wait to introduce Blizzard to Rio and let them run each other ragged. Rio is a great dog who will sit in your lap if you’re in his spot #notalapdog. I managed to quickly check in with my brother in K-town, stayed during the conference at my sister and brother in-law’s place in Burlington and even got a visit in with the legendary Uncle Guy in Toronto one evening. Being on the other side of the country makes this type of tour all the more difficult and I hope next time I’ll be able to connect with my whole family in tow. It took a lot of driving (including through two blizzards in TO) but the selfie tour was well worth it!

Julian: “oh I just can’t wait to be an old big brother and do things ALL BY MYSELF!”

Me: “what will you do?”

Julian: “umm I think… I will play games with my brother who will also be an old brother.”

It has been five years since purchasing our house in a great location in Dawson Creek. It is close to schools, parks, the creek greenbelt… it’s great! The neighbourhood was, however, built over a swamp and this means water. It is a wet area, our backyard is a low spot for the surrounding houses, and the drainage on the house was not correct. It has been five years of water investigation and mitigation as every year we had (unidentified by the seller) a water puddle in the basement by the garage entrance. It has been a gradual process of try something and wait for spring. Roof downspouts have been covered and some added…still water. All the downspouts redirected to the front and water to street…the pudlle returns. A patio was built and yard regraded from house, plus the water flow point at the foundation was dug up and addressed…still water (however, much less time and amount). Last summer a French drain was added to run from a yard low spot to the front of the house…NO WATER!!! Not only no water but the backyard drained with incredible speed and the flow from the French drain outlet was a thing of beauty!

As my father, the man who installed 600ft of drain at his place in the Gatineau Hills, said “A working drain is a beautiful thing.” No truer words have been spoken.