My Happy Place

My happy place is my backyard.  I love sitting in the backyard and not having to worry that the kid’s have left the yard and are running onto the street.  We have a play centre, playhouse and sandbox for them to play in and I can sit in my swing, relax, read a book, or whatever else I feel like doing.  I love it. 

My daughter and I planted a garden with: cantaloupe, honey dew melon, watermelon, tomatoes, cucumbers, pumpkins, zucchini, peas, carrots, onions, bell peppers, green beans and potatoes.  It’s been a great experience for her this summer to learn how food grows.  She loves running out to the garden and picking vegetables for our supper.  She’s planted the seeds, weeded, watered, and is now harvesting the produce. 

This is where I spent a lot of my time.  In the mornings, I love to sit in the swing and read the paper while watching my children playing on the swing set or in the yard. We live in a small town so there’s not a lot of traffic.  Often in the mornings, all I can hear is the sound of the birds chirping and my kid’s playing.  Sounds cliché, but it is beautiful.  Sometimes in the evenings, we have a fire, roast marshmallows, and sit outside and relax.

When my husband and I moved in together, we started working on the yard.  We reseeded all the grass and built a fish pond with waterfall.  Eventually, I would like to make it bigger, but for now it’s perfect.  We built a grate to go over the pond for the next few years to keep the kid’s out.  Earlier in the summer, one of my sons stripped his clothes off and tried to bathe in the pond.  The grate keeps the kid’s out of the pond, and therefore my stress levels down.  J

We have a huge open area where the kid’s can play ball or soccer and a shed that I painted this year to spruce it up.  It’s amazing what a coat of paint can do!  It completely changed the look of the shed...it’s no longer such an eye sore!

See the little brown bridge in to the side?  That’s what my handy hubby built for me this summer.  I remember as a kid LOVING bridges.  I thought they were soooo much fun to play on.  So, when we had extra wood left over from building the fence and the sandbox frame, I begged my husband to build a bridge for the yard.  The kid’s love running over it and playing “troll bridge.”

So, now you’ve seen it.  This is my happy place.  Just being in my backyard brings a smile to my face and makes me feel happy.  I love being outside, but I think it’s also that I love watching my kids, seeing them play together, and realizing that we are making memories.  I hope they look back at their childhoods and remember the time we spent back there with a smile like I will. 

Question of the Day: Do you have a Happy Place...somewhere that makes you feel happy and de-stresses you automatically?