Hanging with Babie

After mom and dad posted the Rattlesnake Hills weekend pictures, my cousin Gabrielle (I call her Babie) sent this fun one along. I like to call it one hand in my popcorn and the other ones holding the roll bar. If I look pretty chill, it's true. It's because I was hanging out with Babie, who is one of my favorite people. She treats me so great!

Wine Tour Weekend

Despite the tough start to the weekend, since we already had plans in place, we decided to still venture over to Rattlesnake Hills (Yakima Valley) to do some winery tours.

While mommy, daddy, aunt Laura, Nana, and Papa Mike went to a bunch of wineries, I hung out with cousin Gabrielle back in town.

Here are some highlights.

Enjoying butter.

Fun with balls in the pool.


Fun with mom in the kiddie pool.


I poured soy sesame dressing all over my self and since mom and dad left the diaper bag (and a change of clothes) in the car, I got to run around in my skivvies on the way back to the car. Great fun!!!


Daddy won several hundred dollars on the NCAA tournament in March, which he figured to either put toward my college trust fund or buy wine. You'll see from this photo that the Rattlesnake Hills wineries won him over.

Farewell Oscar

It was a pretty sad weekend here at the Williams house. Many of you know Oscar has had some problems in his back legs, especially in the past eight months. It was a pretty gradual decline, but in the past two weeks it was getting much harder for him to get up and down and he wasn't able to control his bowels very well for about the last week. On Thursday, he hurt his front leg (how we aren't sure) and by Saturday morning couldn't bear any weight on his his front leg. This left him lame and given his size we made the choice to put him down.

It was hard because he was still lucid and internally sound. He ate breakfast, and snacks at the vets, and even guarded us by barking at the attendants and vet as they entered the room. But as is often the case with giant breeds, his body just gave out on him. Oscar was 7 years and 10 months old, which is very average for a Great Dane and he had a good life. He brought us much joy and was so good with Audrey Bernadette this past year and a half. He is greatly missed.

Oscar at 7 weeks - the day we brought him home.

At three years.

This is a family photo at Audrey's 1 year.

This is the last photo we have of Oscar, taken on Thursday April 15.

A new approach to eating peanut butter toast

look mom no hands . . .

Audrey B 1.5

Mom, Dad and me are still on the mend from a week of passing the flu around, but we had a nice family outing at the zoo today followed by pizza at our favorite local shop to celebrate my big 1.5 years. As a special treat, here are a few pictures from the archives. These are from my first birthday, which Mom can not believe that we forgot to post:

Passports and Starfish

I took my first trip out of the country a couple of weekends ago to see the Paralympics in Vancouver and watch a curling match. Mom enjoyed seeing the sites where the Olympics took place, and I really enjoyed running up and down the ramp in the lobby of the curling rink. It was definitely worth the drive to Canada.

The next day, mom and dad took me to the aquarium to pet the star fish and watch the fish swimming around. I learned that salt water does not taste good, and I've perfected my fish sound (insert lip-sucking noise here).

Happy Easter!

Daddy was super sick this weekend, so we bagged our plans to go to the Bunny Bounce at the zoo on Saturday, and instead joined a low-key egg hunt at the Meadowbrook Community Center. The egg hunt started at 10am sharp, and by 10:03 there was not an egg or scrap of candy to be found on the field! I ran around yelling "BALL! BALL!" and tossing the funny-shaped balls into my basket.

By Sunday, I was a pro at egg hunting, and I used the fantastic stroller that the Easter Bunny brought to gather the eggs at Grandma's house.

There were no shortage of bunnies and chicks at Nana and Papa Mike's, but this one was definitely my favorite. Here I am just before Auntie Laura took my outside for a grand time digging in the dirt in my Easter dress. Thanks, Auntie Laura!