the squibix family blog

Well, that's not totally true; in one respect we were fully prepared. Seeing the snow in the forecast, yesterday morning we busted out the white paper and scissors and made snowflakes. They're up on the windows now. And all the scraps on the kitchen floor made a pretty convincing facsimile of fallen snow. Although they were a whole lot lighter to sweep up than the actual snow was to shovel this morning: the snow changed to rain early in the morning so clearing the front walk was like trying to move wet cement. The rain didn't slow down the kids any, though! There was a two-hour school delay here in town, so Harvey's friend Jack rang the doorbell a little after eight and, after we invited him in for a couple pancakes, the kids spent a delightful couple hours romping in the sodden snow. Now it's getting colder again, and the rain has changed back to light snow. It looks like things'll be white for a little while yet. I'm OK with that.

We were lucky enough to be able to let him die at home—after a terrible experience six years ago he hasn't really done vet offices, and the last thing we wanted to do was make him spend his last moments in such a stressful environment. And we buried him in our yard right by the steps, under the rhododendron bush where he spent so many summer afternoons. The boys lit candles and Harvey offered memorials he'd written on wood.

It's strange losing him. He wasn't such an active participant in our life over the last year, especially since his first stroke—or whatever it was—affected his hips and really limited his mobility. But we counted on him to always be there, and he was: attentive and loving, or at least putting up with us asking him to move from his comfy spot on the couch. And I discover I thought about him a lot. Today I was vacuuming and thought to check where he was so I wouldn't disturb him. Then I almost cried. Our family did fun things today, and argued, and worked; we mourned all day Tuesday, from the moment it was clear that he wouldn't recover, but now life has returned pretty much to normal. Except slightly emptier. He was the best dog.

We miss you Rascal.

Ideally he would have had Zion to solve his puzzle: I got it too fast, and Lijah has very little treasure-finding experience (in treasure hunts as in many things he just wants someone to give him the answer; none of this process business for him!). But the two of us working together did well enough. Harvey didn't do things by half: when we dug at the spot shown on the map we found a tupperware with a piece of paper giving us clues to another spot to dig. That time we found candy, much to Lijah's delight. Then half an hour later Harvey had another hunt for us, this time with two clues before the final payoff.

I was pretty impressed with the whole thing—the map-making of course, but even more the digging! Of course as a joyless old person I tend to think that there are very few places in the lawn that should be dug up, but I tried to suppress that grumpy thought. After all, who cares about grass or perennials when there's treasure to be found!

We do try and get good exercise by ourselves, and we certainly walk and bike plenty (along with a little ball playing now and again). But when it's just us Archibalds we really don't have the same motivation for, say, a good game of tag. But add just one more 9-year-old, and suddenly things are a lot more interesting. Tag with five people lasted a good half hour. There was also lots of climbing and jumping challenges, and we finished things off with some soccer on the giant artificial turf field. Speaking only for myself, it was more running than I did the whole week prior. Good times. We'll do it again next Wednesday.