Author: Elsa

Our cat of 12 years in no longer with us. The vet believed he had a brain tumor that was causing him to lose coordination, weight, and general sense of awareness. He was a one of a kind cat whose curiosity almost killed him several times.

Monti packed pictures of Lumpy in her backpack to share at school. In addition she wore all black to school except for a short white sweater and red shoes. I thought she was dressing to look like Lumpy but she corrected me explaining the "black" was for death, the "white" for the angels in heaven, and the "red" was the devil. Not sure why the devil was involved… maybe it was for all the naughty things Lumpy had done in his life. We will miss him.

Our next door neighbors will be moving at the end of June to California. Dahlia will really miss Captiva. They have a lot of fun together especially if their older siblings aren’t around. One of their favorite tricks is hiding from me. One time they really gave me a good scare when they seemed to just disappear. I went out asking the construction workers on the block if they had seen 2 little girls. After about 10 minutes of calling for them I finally found them in the back hatchback area of my car under some blankets. I aged an extra couple years that day.

Dahlia’s preschool class went to visit a kindergarten class. Each preschooler was paired off with 2 kindergarten students to show them what class life was like. Dahlia enjoyed everything about the visit except for the fact that her teacher rode in the our car over to the elementary school. She told me it made her too nervous. I must confess it was stressing me out also.

For my birthday we bought white carnations to test what would happen in food coloring. Since then the kids have been very dangerous with the food coloring.

Jackie has been on a killing spree this spring. He loves to hunt birds and mice. He had a bell on his collar but it wasn't giving the little creatures enough warning. We added a three large jingle bells to his collar in hopes that this will make his stealth approach impossible. Poor Jackie those loud bells would drive me batty.

We joined some friends on a hike Sunday afternoon. The girls did great on the 3 mile roundtrip hike. The water was really flowing at the falls off the south fork of the Snoqualmie river. Washington state’s snowpack was 184 percent of average for the date as of last Monday. The melted snow is like gold for hydroelectric dams in the area who can sell the surplus electricity generated to California and the Southwest.