CALEB!!!!!!

I think of this blog as a kind of online diary, so this will be a bit different from my other blogs. My Grandson, Caleb, started kindergarten this last Mon. The very first day of school is a special day for any child. Plus Caleb will be six on the 23rd of August. So I decided to do a blog all about this very special child!

Here's Daddy with Caleb shortly after he was born.

Time to celebrate that first birthday!

My daughter-in-law always makes Caleb a very special cake. His favorite sleeping partner at this point was "monkey" so she did this awesome cake for him.

Like many children he liked the box better than the gifts!

Birthday number 2 was different because Daddy had recently left for Iraq. Mom , Grandma and Grandpa took him to the zoo. How he loves the water!(Still does)

No cake this year but a very special desert!

Time for the presents!

Here we are at birthday number three. There will be two parties this year because Daddy will be home soon. On his birthday, we took another trip to the zoo!

Dad's home and it's a Thomas the Train party at Caleb's favorite choo choo train park! Too bad it's raining! Notice the super cake!!

He's even dressed for the party!!

Now he's almost four and ready for the first day at a new pre-school!

Mom baked a "Cars "cake for the school party!

Birthday number 5 has a superman theme. Mom has out-done herself with this cake.

Time for a big boy party with friends!!

Now we are almost six and ready for the first day of school.

Backpack and all !

First on the bus.

I started the blog with a picture of Caleb and Daddy. I am ending it with a picture of Caleb and Mommy. (The super cake baker!) I am one lucky person to have these people as part of my family.

My Garden

Before we moved to the Pacific NW I was a wanna-be Gardner. I always started out in the spring with great ideas. As the weather heated up, I stayed in more and more. I remember going out at 7am and the sweat was dripping off my face. Well, that was the end of Barb the Gardener!! I stayed in my nicely air-conditioned house! When fall and some decent weather came I was too busy back at school to think much about the yard. Here I really enjoy my garden. There are only a few days when it is too hot. In fact we have really lucked out this year! The weather man thinks we will not see one day of 90 !!! I dead head every day and try to keep the flowers coming all summer. Since fall is my favorite season, I have planted several plants to bloom in the fall. Here is a look at some of the mid-summer beauties!

A lovely feathery dahlia that survived in the ground over the winter.

This lily is taller than the SBA-6feet plus.

A close up of the lily.

A lovely day lily that was given to me by a friend. I don't know the variety.

I have three great clematis. They always make me think of my Dad who loved them.

This is an upright fuchsia that dies back every winter and returns in the spring.

This looks like floral sunshine.

This is one of my favorite annuals,rubekia , Tiger Eye. I keep space for them in several spots in the garden.

I read that a vine instantly ages the house. I love the way my onion lamp looks through the vine.

The vine really helps the look of the front load garage.

In the world of cross stitch, I finished Shakespeare's Peddlers," Jenny Bean's Creation Sampler. "
The colors on the photo aren't very good.

Tomorrow, I'm planning a special post about my Grandson who just started kindergarten!

The Last of Alaska

It's been fun choosing the pictures for this, my last post of the Alaska trip. I didn't realize that I took so many pictures of the flowers. However, it does not surprise me as I love flowers -wild or in gardens! For the most part, I'm keeping the flowers I post, the wild flowers of Alaska. We did see many beautiful gardens , especially in Anchorage. This will finish posts from that most amazing trip. I never thought about whether or not we should drill for oil up there. I'm sort of conflicted as part of me knows how much we need oil but the other part says we need to leave this amazing place alone as much as possible.

A close up of the lovely fireweed.

This is a very poisonous plant called monkshood.

We saw this blue and white lupine everywhere.

Not sure what this delicate little flower is called.

I guess seaweed counts as a wild plant!!

I'm not sure the name of the next two yellow flowers.

We saw this plant only in Seldovia.

Very feathery.

This little plant is a member of the orchid family!!

I thought this looked like a snapdragon, but it was wild.

Again, I want to thank all of you who shared this wonderful trip with Jim and me. We will never forget the amazing things we saw. Tomorrow, I'm back to my own garden where I have spent several hours since coming home. It was like a bad child and went a bit crazy while we were gone!!

Wild Flowers of Alaska

I just sat down to choose the flowers that I want to put on the post and there are so many that I think I'll do it in two posts. I am quite a garden-plant lover so naturally the beautiful flowers in Alaska attracted my attention. I think the cool damp weather and the long hours of light encourage beautiful flowers. It was not fully dark till about 11pm. and it was light by 4am. We are well past the solstice so for quite a few months the plants have had many hours of light! I am not sure of all the names but will do my best.

The beautiful Alaska fireweed. There were fields of this lovely plant.

This was a very delicate plant, not sure the name.

This very tall large plant looked a bit like queen ann's lace.

I believe this is wild yarrow.

This was a large bush like plant. We only saw this near Exit Glacier.

Wild columbine

More beautiful fireweed.

This looked like wild sweet pea.

This is not wild but I wanted to show how tall the blue delphinium grew, up to the roof of a very nice cafe.

Thanks again to all of you that are still on the trip. Doing this part of the blog brings back happy memories for me.

Anchorage, AK

I am finally getting ready to finish my blog about our wonderful trip to Alaska. One reason it has taken me some time as we had hardwood floors put in our family room while we were gone. This also involved sanding the kitchen and refinishing that room too. We came home to all the furniture in the dining room and some dust although, the fellow who did the floors was as careful as possible with the dust. I also had 10 days of dead-heading to do in my garden! Enough excuses! As you can imagine, Anchorage was not as beautiful as other places we visited. It was a very touristy town. I did find some things worth a few photos.

I find ravens and crows very interesting so I couldn't resist this sign.

Here we have a bear dressed in Alaska themed fabric.

Another raven -bear advertisement of sorts. The following pictures have no political overtones as far as I'm concerned. I just thought they were funny no matter your politics!

We only saw Sarah Palin stuff in Anchorage, no where else in Alaska.

These beautiful flowers were everywhere. I don't think I've ever seen so many pretty flowers in a city!

This was a nice tribute to the Iditarod dogs.

The Alaska railroad is an important form of transportation in Alaska. People we met in Seward had traveled there from Anchorage.

There is a great bike-walking path along the water in Anchorage. We saw these interesting birds. Someone told us they were a type of Crane. We need to check our bird book!

I'll try to get the wild flower walk on tomorrow. Thanks again to our loyal followers on this trip!

Back Home but not done!

Hi To all you wonderful people who have followed this trip. We are home but I have two more posts. We were not able to blog in the hotel in Anchorage last night. It took 5-8 minutes to load one picture! The SBA refused to take all that time. I want to post photos from Anchorage-some funny pictures. I also want to post the wild flowers of Homer. They were just beautiful and too many to add to the other blogs. So , hopefully we will get things going tomorrow. Thanks again for going on this amazing trip with us!