I delight in the following picture.

Its not the greatest picture by any means--but I think its great. Yes, this is the new pup Rubes. This picture is old--she's not so small anymore--unfortunately. (She is however small enough to escape from her kennel. Don't ask me how she squeezes out but I've witnessed her doing it.)

Back to why I like this picture--Penny is terrified of the water and rightfully so. When she was about Rubes age, she fell in/jumped in following Lucky, not realizing she didn't know how to swim. Dad plucked her out and ever since...she's kept her distance from the water.

SO, the goal for Ruby was to make sure this was not the case. Labs are supposed to be water dogs. When we took her to Island Park this summer, we kept her around the water and even took her to one of our favorite family spots at the buffalo river. She still wasn't keen on going in but then she fell in...I plucked her out...and so this is the look she gave me post-traumatic experience.

I feel like facial expressions, even when they're coming from dogs are pretty classic. I get to work a lot with 4 and 5 year olds and I LOVE IT. Sometimes, they tell me things like:

• "oh, that's a rhombus"
• "my mom told me i couldn't draw that picture"
• Picture shown to elicit the word judge responses: "that's the prophet", "President Monson"
• Picture shown to elicit the word church: "temple" (me: where do you go on Sunday?) "Oh, church...sometimes i get temple and church confused"
• "can you just tell me which one its most like"
• "is that the closest?"
• Picture shown to elicit the word book: "scriptures," "book of mormon" "book of mormon stories that my teacher tell me, are bout lamenites in ansehisory are bout fathers sea if man righteously"
• Picture shown to elicit the word dish: "my mom doesn't keep candies in a dish, she keeps them in a jar--but its empty"

Maybe you can't enjoy these as much out of context, but at the moment, they've all been hilarious.

Don't ask me how I went from a picture of my dog to stories about 4 and 5 year olds. All of them make me happy. Things happening next week are about to make me SUPER happy! More on that later.