Jojo's Birthday and Fishing Up North

This past Saturday and Sunday was dedicated to what is commonly known as "relaxing". Mark drove up to Tomahawk Friday night after he was done at the restaurant for the traditional opening weekend of fishing season with his father and brother and other friends and family members who can join. The Valaskey's have been doing this for many years and sometimes Mark can only make it for a night or a day or a couple days...Since there was no wedding or major party scheduled at the restaurant, he was able to plan to fish with the guys for a couple days.

I, on the other hand, left Cross Plains Saturday morning with the dogs and drove to Rhinelander to visit my folks. It was really nice because Bill was home and John and Jim were also visiting and then my sister, Lisa, and her family arrived too! Saturday started rather cool, wet and dreary, but we had the good luck of a weather change, and by the afternoon it was a beautiful spring day.

We all had a great time playing with the newest member of the family: Oscar. Oscar is a 9-week old Golden Retreiver puppy. He is adorable, of course, and has one of those sad, droopy faces that make him simply irresistable. Mingo and Lily didn't seem to be too interested in him (I think they get too distracted by the fact that they get to run around so much at mom and dad's and there are all these little birds and chipmunks to chase), and initially, Oscar seemed a little intimidated...but by the end of our visit, he was bounding after them (stumbling quite a bit) and gnawing on Mingo's fluffy tail (he tolerated it pretty well).

It was a wonderful visit, filled with an all-day debate on what to name the puppy, a 2 hour croquet game, Stratego, a bon fire, Scrabble, eating and lots and lots of walks in the pines.

We celebrated John's 34th birthday on Saturday (his birthday was Sunday). Mom made a delicious meal and had 2 different kinds of birthday cake. Yum. We also let Jojo win the croquet game (heeheehee). Happy Birthday Johnny! We love you.