I don’t know if it’s the weather, or something else, but I am bubbling over with happiness and just have to share a bit of it. It’s great that when I remember little moments like these, I forget all the difficult parts of my day.

I was weeding my garden today. Amazingly (to me) my carrots and spinach I planted in the fall are still there and look fairly healthy. Unfortunately, the weeds are even healthier. While the baby vegetables merely held their own through the winter and 2 feet of snow, the weeds seemed to thrive. The great thing is that the earth is so moist that it is actually quite enjoyable to pull the weeds out from around my precious vegetables, though it does take quite a bit of time. As I pulled weeds this afternoon, we found worm after worm in the rich dark soil. At one point, Seth was standing near me, eating his snack and quietly watching my progress. “Look,” I pointed. “A worm. It’s a nice big juicy one.” “Juicy?” repeated Seth. I tried to explain what I meant, but Seth had latched on to the word. Every single worm we spotted from then on was called “juicy.” Apparently he thinks that’s what they’re called. And even though he got excited every time we saw them, in his words: “Juicy scare me.”

The other thing Seth likes to do is to put things in his mouth, which was why I was secretly glad he didn’t want to touch the worms. It is possible to find just about anything in Seth’s mouth through the course of the day. Except of course potatoes, which you will never find anywhere near his mouth. Today for craft the kids chose to make cards for people. Not feeling overly creative myself today I pretty much just gave them paper, scissors and crayons and let them go at it. I sat down to work on my puzzle book and spelled words as Elise needed them in her note. Will diligently did his best at keeping colors inside the lines on the picture he was coloring. And Seth took his scissors and dutifully demolished a piece of paper. Occasionally, though, he had to check out the scissors more closely and kept putting them in his mouth, apparently feeling how his tongue felt between the blades. After fair warning, I took one pair away when he got his lips stuck in them.

Earlier today I had gone outside to see how the kids were doing and to tell them it was time for the aforementioned craft time. They were all three climbing on the fence (all at different heights). “What are you doing?” I asked. “We’re playing Kipper,” was the response. Now for those of you who aren’t into toddler age British tv shows, Kipper is a cartoon about a dog and his friends. They all speak with British accents and they are all animals. Kipper has another dog friend named Tiger and a friend named Pig (who is, well, a pig). Pig has a little brother he often takes care of called Arnold, who is always either sucking his thumb or eating candy. Elise clued me in on their characters for their play acting. “Will is Kipper, I’m Tiger, and Seth is Arnold.” “Awnold,” said Seth turning around, and stuck his finger in his mouth and started sucking to prove that he really was Arnold. “Yes, I’m Gippa,” said Will, who can’t quite get the name Kipper right because he always tries to say it with a British accent like they do on the cartoon. These kids crack me up.

And so those were the highlights of our day. Sure there were fights and tears and complaints. But somehow I think that these wonderfully fun moments will be the ones I remember most. (The picture, by the way, is my three kids at the fire station tour we did last week.)