Best Day Ever (Thanks, NC Steph)

My daughter's friend NC Steph (who USED to blog when she was in grad school in Ireland) is the most positive person I know.  She has her share of difficulties but every day on FaceBook she posts some little thing that happened to her that made it her BDE.

Today was a BDE for me.  I got to meet the famous Sonja Tanya's shirt-tail grand niece. Ryya and Vladik came for a visit this evening and brought their son Zhenia and his wife Yulia and little Sonja, who will start First Grade this fall.

Sonja is petite, dark, cute and totally convinced of her own opinions and abilities. Her mother is also petite, dark, cute and not so convinced of Sonja's opinions and abilities.  Their relationship is similar to Calvin (and Hobbes) and his mother.  Sonja's father has his parents' humerous outlook on life and rides herd with a gentle hand (to mix metaphors).  Watching them parent this kid is a treat.

Sonja wasn't here 5 minutes before she was peeled to the skivvies and in our pool (Tanya had filled it for Masha two days ago).  Within half an hour, she had found the neighbour's cat and wondered if she could take it into the pool with her. Then she went looking in the garden and found a huge toad.  Later Sonja, her dad, and I took his fishing pole and walked down to the Yellow River to see if there was a place to cast from the bank (there wasn't).  Sonja had a little home-made fishing pole and a large chunk of break to feed the fishes, (which she ate herself when we couldn't fish).

She is supposed to be reading books but she "can't".  Put her in front of the computer and she can navigate better than her grandma, including changing languages as needed.

In other news, Kuchma hit the jackpot today.  I got up at 6:00 am to go and dig beets for freezing; fed Kuchma his 1/4 can of cat food (his treat for being a "good" cat) and went on my way.  Tanya got up at the same time, damp mopped the upstairs floor as we are constantly battling dust, went downstairs and gave Kuchma the rest of the can of cat food - almost half a can.  Cat slept all day.

We have a small window on the north side of the house that opens into the dog run and through which we occasionally hurl "treats" to the dogs if we are too lazy to walk outside and around.  Tonight we could hear the dogs suddenly start to cry and howl piteously so I went to investigate.  They are sitting under the window.  I guess we didn't throw any bones out today and they were unhappy with that fact.