This Is Amazing To My Eyes!

The former owners of our house continue to haunt us.  Shortly after we moved in, we quickly discovered - and continue to discover, unfortunately - that the family did not take good care of this home.  Our recent haunting came in the form of a trash heap that I noticed behind our back fence.  Between our fence and a rock wall that separates our property from our neighbor's, there's about two feet of more land.  As I was playing with the boys the other day, I saw a TON of trash just over the fence.  Things like old plastic sand toys, trash bags, candy wrappers, old dog balls, etc.  I guess this trash heap was covered up by old leaves and grass?  I'd never seen it before....

So, I put on my rubber boots and gloves and with trash bag in hand walked around the block to get to the part of our backyard just over the fence.  Naturally, the boys got a big kick out of seeing me on the other side of the fence.  Gabe was very curious about what I was doing, so I explained to him that there was a lot of trash that we needed to clean up.  We talked about how trash is not good for the earth, etc.  Everything that I explained to Gabe, he would then pass on to Zach.  It was super cute.  There was a lot of talk about this trash.  Looking back, I realized that the excessive talk probably had something to do with the fact that I often exclaimed, "are you kidding me?" as I picked up broken egg shells, decomposed trash bags, a rusted tape measure, broken toys, etc.  In all, I filled 1.5 trash bags!

I also found a small toy truck, toy airplane, toy hammer, and a decorative garden duck in the heap.  Those "treasures", I placed on top of the fence to wash and give to the boys later.  When Gabe spied the dirty toys, he got very excited.  I explained to him that I'd give them the toys after they were washed.  Well, Gabe got completely jazzed at the idea of buried treasures.  He said the cutest things, and the one that sticks with me the most is: "I'm so excited about these toys.  This is amazing to my eyes!"

And from the other side of the fence, I heard him sing a song from one of our books called, My Nest Is Best.  This is what Gabe was singing:

"I love my nest, I love my nest, in all the world my nest is best."

Gabe was so excited about the unearthed toys that I think he was singing a song about how much he loves his house (aka "nest").  Too cute!