I hope all of you have had a great start to your new year. As you may have noticed I have been hibernating up here in Canada. Truthfully I haven’t been doing much except spending time with John and my dogs.

This is the first January in 13 years that John and I are not making the trip to Florida. Although it is sad not to see all of our Floridian friends, it is nice to have a slower pace for a change. I think we both needed it. I needed it to re-charge my batteries and John needed to get me to finally unpack boxes that have been stacked around this house since we moved in over a year ago.

All moved in now. I have been unpacking, cleaning and organizing. It is so nice for all of us to have a more orderly home. Patient John, waiting a year for it to happen:).

Last week John Hill took some pictures of my dogs. John is not only Lynda Orton-Hill’s husband, he is also a fantastic photographer. I personally think he should go pro:).  So the idea was to get pic of the dogs running in the snow. But as you can see, last week it was warmer here than it was in Florida:).

Although we live in Canada we live in an area of Ontario they refer to as the “Banana belt” because of  the milder winters we get. We are within an hour of the fruit growing areas of the Niagara region which has the longest growing season in Ontario.

Everyone lined up waiting to rip . . . except DeCaff . . . who is showing her BC bits trying to herd the gang.

No. . . really DeCaff, that won’t do either!

Everyone “loaded” I give their “break” cue.

And they’re off! I think the girls help to keep Buzzy young.But it doesn’t take long before it is a race of only two.

But never fear, although we do get milder winters here than most of Ontario we do get winter as evident from this morning’s photo:).

I haven’t been completely idle here for the last week. I have 3 projects I will be rolling out for all of you over the next little while. Thanks for your patience with my recent disappearance:).

Let me take this opportunity to send out positive energy to all who read this to help make 2011 our most amazing and memorably year yet!

Today I a grateful for an organized house and a tolerant John (who after having me home for a full month may now be thinking it is time I decided to go somewhere soon:).