Soggy Days

We've felt like wet puppies half the time this week.  I can't remember it raining this hard and this much since I've lived here.  All night.  All day.  Feet-chilling puddles and skies so low you can almost touch them.

I usually like the rain, but I don't like getting out in it.  Something happens to a 4-year-old when it rains to make them slower than ever getting to and from the car.  I'll stand outside the door and tell her how much I'm freezing and getting my feet wet, but she just looks mildly interested but keeps on with her slow wiggling around and getting settled.

On the other hand, the 6-year-old is as cold-natured as her Mimi, and we can't get home and out of the wet fast enough.  We half jogged home yesterday with hot chocolate and cookies waiting, but today on the early pickup Friday, we walked in the mild-at-the-time rain to the library and then to the frozen yogurt place for a treat.  Not my idea, the frozen yogurt!

I try to store up these special times with Graysen because she's just getting so big, but I know I won't remember things, so I come here to write them down.  The things we talked about on the walk to the library:  Playing noodle hockey at PE and how she's still the fastest girl in her grade.  She says.  How she got hit in the jaw with a basketball at practice last night, and it still hurts to smile big.  Stopping to stare into and comment on a storm drain.  How dizzy it makes her feel to walk along the rock wall on the way.  Debate on the shortest way to go.  She already knows her way around downtown.  Asking when she can walk to school by herself.  (Never, if you ask me!)

I picked up our books, and she went over and picked out a couple herself and then went down the block to this cute little shop.

The girls love to come here because, besides the sweet stuff, they have a wall-mounted TV that plays old-style cartoons, mainly Tom and Jerry.  I told her I could remember watching those when I was a little girl but that they were not in color, just black and white.  She looked at me blankly, then asked if I remembered seeing any of the ones we saw.  Bless her that she thinks I can remember anything I saw that long ago when I can't even remember what I did yesterday.
 

I forgot how violent they were.  

Seems like yogurt might be a little bit healthier than some things, but I may as well have poured pure sugar in her cup.

Strawberry lemonade yogurt with gummie sharks and gummie candy corn and a few sprinkles of some kind of colored cereal.  Made my teeth hurt to watch her eat it.

I can't spend enough time with this girl.

We got home to find Katherine and Aunt CeCe painting that fabric for the doll pants.

By the time I got ready to take pictures, Katherine had gotten bored and left the room.  It didn't take the other two long to get bored either.  Looks like that doll is going to be wearing black and white pants.  It is rather tedious.  I tried a flower or two, and I didn't get much pleasure from it.

I didn't take one picture of Katherine today or yesterday.  She's not even in this Pajama Day drop-off one that I took of Ms Tricia's Christmas tree pajamas.  I didn't record the duck onesie that she had on today.

Rooster Valley lost their beloved Elsie this week to cancer.  Katherine informed me she was a Bernese Mountain dog, and she was at the school the first of the week to get some extra loving from the kids.

-----Rest In Peace sweet Elsie Sue. You are the first RVFS dog. You were there our very first year when we did not yet have enough students to fill one classroom. You literally were our silent but hardworking and unpaid third partner that helped us make our school what it is today and helped us grow. We are so lucky that you were born. We are so lucky that you shared your life with us. Thank you. Happy Trails sweet baby girl- until we meet again.
Elsie Sue Ward
12/8/2012 - 12/6/2019

 


What a beautiful and sweet girl.  She greeted me every day when I would pick up Graysen in those hard first days without Mike.  Katherine was just learning to walk well, and she would bury her face in that warm fur, and Elsie just put up with all the mauling from the kids.

I was looking for some pictures of her from this blog and found this one of baby Graysen hugging her friend Brooklyn in that same puddly drive - 3 years old.




And these are the pictures that made me want a puppy.

---- We'd like to introduce you to the newest member of the Rooster Valley family.  This is Beau- a 10-week-old Bernese Mountain dog from the same breeer as Elsie that will be coming home to Ms Jen soon.  Beau is goofy, clumsy, and super social.  He loves stuffed animals, his kong with two tails, and is looking forward to learning to pull a cart.  Raising a Berner in the classroom is like nothing else in the world.  There will be times when we think we were delirious for brining a ginormous puppy into our small space.  There will be shoes eaten, toys stolen, and most like drywall repair.  But there will be much laughter, love, and joy.  we have had a high bar raised, and we can never replace our best girl, but we know that Elsie would never want RVFS to be without a Berner.  We also know that she picked just the right one for us.  Introducing Beau.

That took half my night, but it's raining like crazy and I'm happy for it to be Friday night with my Saturday to do uninterrupted time-wasting.  I do have to put together four gingerbread house for Katherine's class by Monday.  I hope I don't somehow mess them up.

It