Meet Oscar the Bragg Pup; Susan's coming!

This weekend the kids and I went to Rhinelander, for a long overdue visit. It was an eventful time to be there, since Laurie, John, Jim, and Bill were also up for the weekend. A fun bonus was that Mom and Dad had adopted a new golden retriever puppy, just days before.

Right away Laurie and John took charge of the name selection process, and some creative puppy names were proposed. One popular favorite was Mr. Bo Jingles-- a very clever name, indeed. Other suggestions were Whiskey, Caramel, and Hector, but in the end, Mom and Dad vetoed them all and came up with their own name... Oscar.

Michael and Emma had a blast playing games with their aunt and uncles. First they enjoyed a highly competitive two hour-long croquet game. Emma was shown how to knock her opponents' balls (she's a natural at that). Everyone took turns playing Stratego with Michael (who gleefully out-manuevered each challenger). Uncle Bill even taught Mikey and Emma how to play Scrabble, which led to Emma having the glorious moment of using up all of her letters in one word, for 90 points (go, Emma!).

We had a birthday party for John, along with a fabulous ham dinner and two birthday cakes, courtesy of Mom. Saturday night we had a bon fire-- after some effort. Unfortunately we also needed (and were given) a fire safety lesson from Dad.

The weather was nice enough all weekend to spend lots of time outdoors, and we enjoyed walking the dogs in the woods. Laurie had brought along Mingo and Lilly, though I had left Coco behind in Colfax at Jon's request (he had to stay home and work this weekend, and wanted company). It was sometimes challenging to get little Oscar to follow the group (he kept wandering back toward the house), but overall he did a good job of keeping up with his Bragg-Valaskey "cousins".

This was Leila's first visit to Rhinelander. She went for one stroller walk with us, but mostly spent her time indoors, curled up on people's shoulders. She's one month old now. As you can see in the photos, her eyes are still blue and her hair is still spiky. She is sweet and good-natured; we couldn't love her more.

Next weekend she gets to meet her big sister, Susan! Susan is flying in to Minneapolis on Sunday, May 10th, and staying at our house for the week. She's seen the Colfax house already, since her and David were with us in December when we were first shown the place. But she hasn't been here since we moved in, and she hasn't met Leila yet. So we're very excited

to have her coming.

We'll make a point to travel to Cornell at least once during her stay, as she probably won't be coming for a summer visit this year (though we still expect David).

Have a great month of May!!