Tuesdays With Kal & Finn

Today was Kalvin's last day of school.
And it was only a half of a day! 

 That is it. 

180 days completed.
Summer is about to begin.

 But first, we had something to take care of.

We have had a pet turtle, Cookie, for the past year.

We inherited Cookie from Kalvin's cousin,  Logan. 

Logan rescued Cookie from the lake in his back yard when he was the size of an Oreo cookie. 

Cookie has grown to the size of Kalvin's hand.

I feel pretty comfortable saying Cookie has spent 90% of his time in captivity trying to escape.
I couldn't stomach watching him swim into the glass.
 Over and over.
Clawing to get out.

 One.  More.  Day.

The warm weather finally arrived.

And we had a mission.
To find a better living arrangement for Cookie.

  I spent some time investigating how best to free Cookie.

So we could give him a better home.

We decided to set Cookie free in a local a pond.

Here we are sending Cookie off.

You can see Cookie now has a gorgeous, very large home.  Filled with frogs and guppies.

It was hard to put him down.  To let him go.

But we knew he would be happier.  We knew it was the right thing to do.
Cookie scaled the big rock.

And then swam away.  Quickly.  Never looking back.



I had no idea a turtle could swim that fast.
Bye Cookie.  Enjoy your new life.
I think you can spot him there in the middle of the picture.
  (Sorry, these pictures were taken with my IPhone.)

Finn was not quite so sure about letting Cookie swim away.



But we were all tickled with joy that Cookie was now swimming freely in the big pond.



 

But then we realized Cookie was gone. 
And probably for good.
The tears came.
 And we were sad for a while.

 Kalvin decided to take a little piece of memorabilia from Cookie's new home.

He picked this stick.  His sense of nostalgia amazes me.





We drive past this pond daily and now will always think of Cookie as we pass by.

  As hard as it is to say goodbye, I think we all know this is the best thing to do.

For Cookie.

Then we headed off to CVS.

Where a stranger, standing next to us in the checkout line,  gave each boy a dollar bill. 

Just because.

I told the kind woman that the boys would be sure to pay it forward this summer.

And she said that is what she had hoped for.

What a great lesson for the boys to experience this summer.

Paying it forward.



We talked about who we might help with our dollars.

We will tuck the dollars way and wait for the perfect moment to surprise another stranger.





Oh, and about those Bruins, you ask?
  Kalvin was upset about Game six.  It was heartbreaking.

But he seems to have moved on. 

He begged me to take him to CVS to get a football magazine. 

GO PATS! 

And of course the boys of summer are still on every night...

GO SOX!