Best Thing I've Seen All Week

squeeze!!

 I posted this for Tadly earlier this week but I feel this needs to be re-posted again.  Mainly because this little creature is ADORABLE but also it's so fantastic that a species is rediscovered after more than a century.  

Also, it reminds me of a muskrat and I have fond memories of muskrats from my childhood.  We have a creek that runs right beside my family home.  For many years we had muskrats that had a little den about 10 feet from the side door and one summer one of the babies took a liking to me. It would then follow me around the yard and I would put out carrots for it to munch on.  I could never get close enough that I could hand-feed it and I wouldn't have even if I could since that has always been a big no-no in my wildlife rule book.

pure adorableness.

Abigail Recommends and Tadly Illustrations

Here is this week's Abigail Recommends.  Insider tip: I really did wear my nightgown for Book Day along with my favorite bonnet to dress up as Laura Ingalls and I did it at least 3 years in a row.  I was pretty skilled at dressing like her and running around our fields pretending to be her.  I read those books so many times I wore down places on the covers where my fingers rested.   In second or third grade my Grandma Shade started buying dolls from the Little House series.  I have Laura, Mary, Nellie and Almanzo.  Her goal was to get me the entire set but she passed away before that happened.  They are still under my bed at home in their boxes.  I never took them out because for some reason as a kid I was dead set on wanting to wait to display them when I had my own home.  Apparently as a child owing fancy dolls like these was not something I took lightly.  Now I'm waiting until I have a space where it won't look insane that I have 4 porcelain dolls on stands presented in glass domes because I don't want any dust to get onto Nellie's curls.  My lovely Aunt Linda (who knew the full extent of my love for this series) sent me the Little House Cookbook this Christmas and just sent me an article alerting me to Wendy McClure who wrote a book that I would have killed to write.  I haven't gotten a chance to read this yet but when I do I will read the crap out of it and dream of the day I go visit the places Laura lived and visit the library and museum (as discussed on This American Life).  It's right up there with going to Monticello for me. 


And in another note, this is my favorite Tadly illustration that Scott has done thus far.  Tadly Weekly #8.  Love it.