Sea legs!

When Captain Mike Sheafe calls, you better answer. The invitation to go boating around Boston Harbor on a gorgeous evening was hard to resist, and had me eagerly running down the plank to get to the boat. Audrey was more than a little sketched out by the idea, though. Them ain't sea legs yet:

Once on board the boat, she was still feeling a little sheepish.But we gave her a talking-to...

...which seemed to reassure her.

Then we put her to work -- pulling in the bumpers...

...monitoring the motor...

...and keeping an eye out for sharks:

I think we made Captain Mike Sheafe proud...
...and we felt a little victorious ourselves. I mean, we did just conquer the sea, after all.

In the end, we needed to reflect on what it all means:
Thanks again to our great friend Anne for taking these pictures and documenting the fun for us! Despite taking most of the pictures featured on the Diva Gremlin blog, Anne has yet to appear in one -- a situation which will have to be remedied soon...

Softball, sort of

Audrey came to softball field yesterday to perform her duties as one of several mascots for "Engrossed Out", our rec league softball team. We don't ask much of her -- mostly that she sit by and look cute... and occasionally lend some moral support to our players sweating it out on the diamond...
But Audrey was more interested in wrestling with her buddy Lucy, Devon's pit bull/lab pup. They are ferocious, and there was much gnashing of teeth.

Little did Audrey know that the best part of her night was yet to come, when Captain Mike Sheafe would call and invite us on a little seafaring voyage...

No, we're not on acid

But maybe you are. Didja ever think of that? Okay, so I really just wanted to get a nice picture in profile of my lovely puppy, who's becoming increasingly elongated as she grows. Seriously, she's long and lean and mostly sinew over here. Even her snout is losing its puppy puggishness -- hence the call for the profile shot. But she's a restless little bugger, and flat-out refused to sit still. So instead what I ended up with is a series of progressively nightmarish pictures of some pitiless, mythical beast poised to devour. Sorry for the bad trip, bro:
Finally, Audrey chilled out long enough for me to take this (-- I recommend you do the same):

Diva in repose

The weather in Olympia has been wacky lately. It's been hot. It's been cold. Audrey's strategy for coping with either condition is essentially the same -- to lay low. Really low. And leave the manual labor to the servants.

Here, she's cold:

Here, she's hot:
Oh, I don't think you fully appreciated her face:
Don't worry, I'm already fetching her another cocktail...

Maybe she's part luck dragon?

Audrey from the Diva Gremlin blog:
Falcor from The Neverending Story:

Jungle gyms and naked hipsters

Audrey and Amy and Lucy and Jasper went to the playground......where they did some swingin'......and some slidin'...

...and some runnin' around...
We even had a little moment I like to call "When Blogs Collide":
In the end, though, Lucy was way to cool for all of it.

First time swimming

At Larrabee State Park, Lucy and I went wading into the Sound, hoping to entice Audrey into the water. Audrey ventured out a little, but more in an oversight capacity. Being a puppy and thus enamored of all things stinky and gross, she much preferred to hang out in the muck and the mire.

Rotting seaweed definitely counts as stinky and/or gross.

Cousins!

Audrey recently met her cousins when my sister brought my niece and nephew out to Washington from upstate New York.  It had been a year since I'd seen Lucy, my three-and-a-half year-old niece, and I had yet to meet Jasper, my six-month-old nephew. When I first walked through the door of my parents' house, Lucy greeted me by saying "I love you, Audrey!" They became buddies pretty quickly after that, a bond which they helped forge by some rambunctious hard-core playing.

Eventually, they settled into a sweet easy rhythm. 

While, unlike Lucy, Jasper didn't dub Audrey a "cutie munch," or report every time she was being mischievous or "ridiclious" or poised to poop on the floor -- due, in part, because he isn't yet verbal -- he did have a chance to be rowdy with the gremlin. Here he is, unaware of how his life is being spared only by Amy's benevolent hand, fixing his big smile and blue eyes on the camera.