Goodbye, Lilly

Lilly left us early this morning.

She had been slowing down for quite a while, and she finally let go. We are terribly sad, but glad she's no longer in pain.

She was almost seventeen, very old for a Maine Coon cat (which is what I'm pretty sure she and Seuss were), a year and a half older than her brother when he died.

Jessica took this picture about two years ago. If Lilly looks a little cranky, it's because she wasn't always amused by the girls' attempts to play with her. She tolerated it pretty well usually, though, and in the last few months of her life, she seemed to really appreciate their attention.

Jigsaw Puzzle; Elyse's Curls

Last night we did a jigsaw puzzle as part of what Jessica calls our Puzzle Club. We also had snacks--saltines with peanut butter, which Jessica created. Since the puzzle we did last night only had 60 pieces, I think it took longer to get the snacks together than to get the puzzle together. Nonetheless, Elyse wanted me to take a picture of her with the finished puzzle:

I think we bought this particular puzzle in Excelsior, MN, about four years ago when we were visiting Theresa and Jeb at their (then) new house, during one of our summer trips to Minnesota.

For the record, the puzzle we did the night before was 150 pieces; that's a better challenge for us.

This morning before her last day of Wild West Camp at St. Matthew's, Elyse wanted Mommy to curl her hair, and then she wanted me to take pictures:

Snaggletooth Elyse!

Elyse lost her first tooth!

(She's wearing her hat because she wants to look like a cowgirl -- she and her Mommy are about to go to the Grayson Farmer's Market and, hopefully, ride the horse there. I just hope the horse is there again this week. Also, she's been in preschool camp this week at St. Matthew's, and the theme is Wild West Week, so she's got cowgirls on the brain, I think.)

Tubing in Helen; Bottles of Cider

Today Anna, Jessica, and I drove up to Helen, Georgia, so Anna and Jessica could "Shoot the Hooch," (a colloquialism that means to go tubing/rafting/kayaking on the Chattahoochee River) and I could walk around Helen and, well, mostly be really hot. (I enjoyed it anyway.)

First I took the girls to Helen Tubing, the same place they went exactly one year and one day ago for their first tubing adventure:

Then I spent about half an hour walking around the place that's adjacent to Helen Tubing, mostly taking pictures of the beautiful patterns made by the rows and rows of jars and jugs of various types of cider:

After that, I walked around Helen proper for a while, had an Italian soda at the coffee shop (it was too hot for coffee!), and then picked up Anna and Jessica at Helen Tubing's official "get out here" spot. The three of us walked around Helen for a while, shared a funnel cake, and headed home.