This little guy came to the birdbath one am and thought to himself "WOW! a private bath. BUT
little did he know it would not last long... Soon Mo and Jo joined him just for company and THEN
Lo and Behold - the whole family came for a community bath !
The picture is too small to really see the flutter of the wings in the water in the third picture.
I enjoy my birdies bath in the mornings.
They often go rub in the dust of the driveway and then come to the birdbath to clean off.
What a blast they can be when they all hit the tub at the same time !

This is one of my favorite pictures of all time.It was taken when Bob was on Attu in the Coast Guard.We had only been married a year and two months when he left for a year of isolated duty in Alaska.This was taken in his room. Don't know who took it but I told him he had to have at least one picture of himself with every set of pictures he sent home. IT WAS A LONG YEAR !I was in Aberdeen for the year. We had been living in Seattle where he was stationed when he got his orders. Rather than stay in "the big city" Mom and Dad asked if I wanted to come back to Aberdeen and stay with them while he was gone so we took them up on it. I went back to work at the D & R with our former boss finding me extra work thru the week for more hours. I also worked at a florist shop that was right near the theatre. It was just a little one man shop and he needed some help on days he had big orders sohe trained me as an apprentice. I loved working there... especially the days we got new orders of flowers in. I used to smell the roses when they first came in and he said I would soon get over that but I never did. They were just so pretty I couldn't resist a sniff each time!We got thru the year but seem like forever. Before we got married we had been separated for three months while he was in boot camp, then for six months while he was in ET school in Groton, Conn. so we were used to separation but that didn't make it any easier.One reason he didn't re-enlist is we knew as an Electronic Technician it would mean another year of isolated duty if he stayed in. We weren't ready for that again. So what happened, he got stationed on the Coast Guard Cutter Winona when he got home with only four more months to go. And guess what in November they went to sea for a month. Oh well, that is history and we got thru it ok... Even tho at the time it seemed like the end of the world every time he had to leave.

Things have slowed down around here a bit. With my not being able to drive....
it is a little more difficult to be in the "rat race." It is all working out with some planning
and I am having fun getting a lot of Scrapbooking done since I can't be out and about
very easily anyway.

I finished up my two capitols from our Calif/Nevada vacation. I now have 22 capitols in my album - almost half way.

Caught up on a mini book we made in my scrapbook class last month. Used some of the
autumn pictures from our New England trip. Turned out rather pretty, if I say so myself.

Got numerous chronological pages done and feel a lot more caught up.

Sat down and went thru some recent pictures we had taken, got the ones chosen I
want to use and got them all printed up at Walgreens. So I am ready to Scrap !!

I'm at a point where I can go in and just sit down for a few minutes and have something
to do. When I get behind then I don't know where to start when I do have a little chunk
of time available so I am feeling really good about now being ready.

Had my receptionist that drives up from Seaside for our early WW mtg pick me up for my meeting Thursday and Bob picked me up when I was done.
So things are working out - I have an appointment with the neurologist the 17th so hopefully I will be able to drive after that.

Yesterday we had all our "cruise buddies" over and got all the preboarding paperwork done on line so we won't have to stand in line when we get to the cruise office the day we leave.
We are all getting excited now. We leave one the 29th of this month.

I'm feeling better and my large banana shaped eggplant colored bruise is beginning to look
the color of a human body again and it isn't hurting as badly as it did at first.

We enjoyed a visit from Ken and La Chel last weekend. Always love to have "kids" come home.
You are all welcome at any time around here!

So things are sort of enjoyable for the time being. Sometimes getting out of the rat race can be a good thing for awhile.

OK, Kids - identify this.
The first one to respond with the correct answer gets a Tootsie Pop!
Hint - We took this when we were visiting Pat and Lyle on our way up to our our weekend at Ocean Shores.
We were sitting out in front in the car looking at the house and a guy came out and asked if he could help us.
The house is up for sale so guess he thought we were thinking of buying it....
I tried to talk him into letting us go thru it but he said we would have to go thru the Realtor. He said the guy selling it has totally redone the inside. The side garage is now a bedroom and there is a bar between the kitchen and the domed living room. They totally redid the foundation.
I was dying to get inside....
What do you think?

This is my little friend, Henry. He lives on or around my hose in the back yard. He comes every year and often I forget to check to see if he is on the hose before I water my plants in the morning. Then, guess what, he goes for a little ride as I unwravel the hose to reach the flower beds.
He doesn't seem to mind too much but I always feel bad when I start to rewind the hose when I'm done with it and I see him clinging to the hose or the side of the holder looking a little dizzy.
Sometimes he just sits on the side of the house clinging to the siding.
He is a cute little guy and comes back every spring to live there. Guess he likes the moisture he gets from the rocks under the hose. I was hoping he would show up when the grandkids were here so I could introduce them - and Lo and Behold - he did but it was early in the morning when I went out to water and none of them were up yet. But just in case he didn't stick around, I took a picture of him on Savannah's camera so I could at least show them the picture and sure enough he was gone before they got up.

We have had Savannah and Ethan here since Sunday. Today we will be going up to Longview to meet Lorraine and get Kyler.
Friday we are going out in the RV just for fun -
Then we have to return the kids on Monday.
We've had a blast.
Yesterday we went out to the animal shelter and spent two hours just loving the kittys.

OK It's short but sweet today. We are heading over to Jackie's to love on her kittys this am.
Hugs

Sometimes you just have days like this... all is well with the world !
(In spite of the fact I have had gremlins doing really weird things on my computer the past few days. Some of which have even stumped my live in "computer whiz.")

The sun is shining. I got in a little early for a haircut app't so walked the river walk awhile. The ships were gently moving up the river, the birds were on the pilings, the water was lapping along the shore. I love Astoria!
After my app't I stopped in for a latte at the little coffee shop next to the hair salon. It was funny as I was getting hair cut you can hear the coffee machines as they are right beside each other. I asked Vicki (my hair dresser) if that was the latte machine. She said "Oh no that is the Smoothie machine. The latte machine makes a clacking noise." She knows them all by heart.

After getting my latte, I walked over to get my coupon scanned at JoAnn's so I will continue to get their ads. Found a really cool plum basket for behind my chair for 1/2price (My old one is falling apart)and a really neat pkg of 12 x 12 paper with fall and Christmas paper that was way COOL.

On the way back to the car stopped to look in a window of a small little store on a side street to enjoy two large kittys both sleeping along the window glass. One big tabby up front with his fur pushed up against the window and on his tail again pushed up against the window another big black one end to end - both SOUND asleep. I couldn't go in to love them a bit as the store was closed but they made my heart happy!

My Weight Watcher lesson is done for this week. Always a good feeling to be prepared before the "day" of the meeting. It has been doing great this summer. We have averaged with both meetings about 90 members a week...usually around 50-55 first mtg and around 40 or so second meeting. Wondering what will happen in Sept when all our vacationers and our "I've blown it all summer and want to look nice for the holidays"
people come back. I challenged them all (baiting them with prizes along the way) to come 12 out of the 14 weeks before Labor Day and they seem to have taken the bait : )
But we still have LOTS of new people after school starts and the routine begins for everyone.

Our garage sale was a HUGE success last weekend! Had four of us with things in it and we ran two days putting out new things on the second day. One lady came by three times and bought each time. With all four of us we were about $10 shy of selling $900 worth of stuff! Not bad for things we wanted to get rid of, huh ! We met Kevin Pierce from J & S next door in Dairy Queen Sunday night and apologized for all the cars coming in and out and even parking in their lot. He just looked at me and said."Oh, we expect it at least once a year." They are such good neighbors.

Anyway Bob is filling in on the Light Ship with an unexpected shift this afternoon. Dinner will be as soon as he gets home as we have a concert tonight at the Liberty Theater here in Astoria. What better day could one ask for -
GOD IS GOOD !!
HUGS !!

This must be how the other half lives !!
I'm sitting in the window overlooking the ocean with a cup of coffee while my favorite man snoozes... The room is quiet, the ocean waves crashing in on the sand, a mama deer with her fawn feeding below our fourth story room which looks up and down the beach. Our bed will be made by the maid, breakfast will be served when we go to the dining room....There is a boardwalk to the ocean, our room has a fireplace and we watched a gorgeous sunset from our window last night over the ocean!
We are at the Ocean Shores Resort as a freebie from Bob's 50th class reunion prize.
We drove up on Friday am, visited Pat and Lyle over lunch in Aberdeen then headed on up to Ocean Shores. Yesterday after my 30 minute (free) massage, we headed into town and played around. Visited the Interperative center, had huge ice cream cones at a little place called Murphy's which made us feel like we were back in the 50's, played 36 holes of miniature golf - meeting a really fun couple about our age that was playing right behind us that we visited with at each hole as we waited for the party ahead of us to finish each hole. Then came home to keep our reservations for dinner (free) in the resort dining room. Really a fun get away -
We will head home this afternoon and back to reality....
(Cathy, we are about ten miles from the house you were checking out as a potential Christmas setting if anyone is interested - so we plan on driving by just for fun since we are so close)
(Steve/Lorraine - We found a really cool campground (Ocean City State Park) with lots of trees and green grassy spots along the beach here in Ocean Shores with spots way large enough for our RV and several tents -will talk to you about it when we get home. Has potential unless you think it is too far away. Ocean Shores is about 45 minutes from Aberdeen)

Plan on a cemetary visit on our way home thru Aberdeen. Haven't made it up to check on things for awhile. More when we get home
Hugs to all

Just got home last night from a weekend with Steve, Lorraine,Spencer and Riley camping at Stub Stewart State Park up near Vernonia. We tend to look for closer RV parks now with the cost of gas and this is one we had never been to before. It just opened a year ago so everything is nice and clean and new. Nice park! A little bare of trees right now on the RV field but they have planted some for future shade.
It does have beautiful forests all around and lots of trails although it was really to hot to do much hiking.
Saturday we drove in and did the town of Vernonia (in about ten minutes : ) It is a quaint little place but too small to have much to do. We hit a few antique shops and a pet store where a cute little bird pooped on Steve's arm but that pretty much covered the town experience.
We played games ... waited on Spencer to make the most possible points rearranging his cards : ) playing Quiddler, laughed together playing a game called "What Would You Rather Do?" What a riot! Can't remember for sure the first part of the question but it was - something like "Would you rather have white eyeballs or AN EYE BALL ON THE END OF YOUR FINGER. NOW this intrigued me! No question here. I want an eyeball on the end of my finger! JUST THINK OF THE POSSIBLILITIES HERE - with an eyeball on the end of your finger you could see around corners, look down the back of your neck if you had an itch, look in small places for a lost item, sneak a finger to the next page for an answer to a test and other numberous options. Why didn't God think of how convenient that could be !
Then we ended the last evening with S'Mores around the campfire. What more could you ask for on a camping trip. That's what memories are made of !! Fun Times Together.

Forgot to tell you about my "cool find" at a recent garage sale. Judi and I went to one in Astoria that was several blocks long with sales on both sides of the street. Really cool as we just parked and did all the blocks at one shot.
Anyway I found a really cool metal lamp with a really pretty shade for the table beside my living room chair for $5 bucks. But when I got it home I couldn't find a switch anywhere even on the cord where I figured it must be but when I plugged it in to be sure it worked (which he promised me it did) I accidently bumped it AND IT CAME ON. Bumped it again and it got brighter and again - brighter still.
I have seen these but had no idea this was one of them. I LOVE IT ! He had two more there and if I had known they were so cool I would have picked up another one.

We had a blast that day. Hadn't been out garage saleing (how DO you spell that?)all year and just took off on a whim after going to a sale our Close to My Heart lady had at her house one Saturday morning. We just goofed around all morning and I found all kinds of little fun things without spending a whole lot of money.

Now we are in the middle of prepping for ours which will be July 25 -26. It is always a big job but a good feeling to get to downsize and sort things out. Always feel "so organized" when we are done.

Organization! I love it but don't do nearly as much as I wish I could. To many other things crowding in. "Clutter drives me up the wall" - Found a saying in a magazine the other day I am hoping to live by more and more. It said "IF IN DOUBT, DUMP IT
YOU WILL REVEL IN YOUR DECLUTTERED EXISTANCE AND HAVE FEWER ITEMS TO DUST."
I love this but I MUST tell you I had to move a whole pile of papers and books on my desk to find it under the glass where I tucked it so I wouldn't lose it before I could share it with you. OH DEAR - guess I certainly haven't reached my goal yet, huh!
Hugs to you all today!

The Great White Hunters Greatest Fan





Winning The Mole War !

The other day we mentioned to Jackie we had a mole starting to invade our yard. She went home and told Chris and she said he got a smile on his face... Mike Seppa had just shown him the secret to catching the pesty little things. So when they came over to celebrate Jackie's birthday yesterday he brought his trap and set it. We had a BBQ
dinner, watched a movie, opened gifts, had dessert and they were getting ready to leave when Chris decided to check the trap. LO AND BEHOLD - one pesky little critter had met his match !

It was our Great White Hunter!
Thanks Chris !

I'm reading thru Genesis in my QT and there are so many tiny little things I miss that Scripture always has something new for me.
This am I was in chapter 24 and didn't get very far because I began to ponder the story of Abraham's servant and Rebekah. I've read it gobs of times but never really thought about Rebekah's Mom in this whole episode....
I was thinking of the picture on Cathy's blog yesterday of her hugging Savannah and her caption
"Love this gal." So Cathy how would you respond if a man rode up on a camel (oh, lets change that to drove up in a Camry instead of a camel) and told you God had told him to bring your daughter immediately to a foreign land to marry someone you'd never met. Rebekah's Mom at least tried to buy some time "Can't we wait 10 days or so"
Nope - Got to leave in the morning. And Rebekah was willing so off she went.
WOW - sometimes I often forget the little details of the stories behind the words in Scripture and the impact of those people that are affected by God's directions.

Like earlier in Genesis I read the account of God telling Abraham after all those years they were going to have a son. Amazing news !!! BUT note that when the two angels came to talk further about this (no time frame listed) Sarah was totally surprised. HE HADN'T EVEN TOLD HER ABOUT THIS AMAZING EVENT ABOUT TO HAPPEN (isn't that just like a man !!)
Oh yeah, honey, I forgot to mention that !

So many fun little details I often miss. Someday I will ask Abraham why he didn't tell her.
Maybe God told him not to but it isn't recorded if He did.

Just challenged you all to comment on my last post.
Just so you don't have the excuse you don't know how
IT"S EASY !
Just type on "comment" on the bottom of the post. Type in the comment box
Check where it says NAME/URL any type in your name
Then publish.

Sometimes it will give you a silly little code thing to type "what you see"
but you can figure that out then just proceed from there.

COME ON = BE BRAVE
TAKE THAT FIRST BIG STEP ! TALK TO ME........

Come on, I know all of you out there are some kind of an 'oholic - I know that isn't a real word but you have to fill in the first part. Hadn't really thought too much about this but when we were on vacation it sort of hit me. (Do you always take the pens from the motels ? --And the shampoo and lotion even if you don't use it. You should see all of the cute little different shaped bottles of shampoo I have under my sink.
Do you go to home shows just to see what kind of gimmicks they give away (with their name on it, of course) You know all of the little freebies that you probably never use....
Or can you never pass up a new bag or container (or whatever your 'ohlic is) of some kind at a garage sale. After all, it is only 50 cents and I just might need it sometime. Purses just jump off of the shelf into my cart at stores. They really need to train them to stay put when they display them. MY garage sales are usually full of ones that I found out I really didn't need. My sock drawers are FULL but then they have such cute sox now days and EVERYONE knows that your sox must match your shirt so it takes a lot of them. (And my scrapbook room - we won't even go there !!!)
But come on - be real and honest - you all have something you collect whether you need it or not. Come on - fess up. I rarely ever hear from any of you so BE BRAVE - BE BOLD - EXPOSE YOURSELVES - LEAVE ME A COMMENT. WOW, does that scare you.... I know some of you read my blog because I often hear "Oh I heard that because I read it on your blog.
SO I know you are there but lurking in the shadows. Cathy bribes people with prizes just to draw them out of the woodwork. I'm also too cheap to do that. Pretty sad, huh !
But back to addictions and and 'oholics guess we all have our odd little quirks in life.
But then, whatever, at least I'm not out there sitting in all those casinos we saw on vacation wasting my money. I'm just too cheap to give up the money in my hot little hand to try because I know those big fancy places are not built without lots of customer money... Face it - chances of a BIG win is pretty slim. And then if one does win, there is the greed of maybe I can get more and so go on until all you won is gone too. So whatever --- we all have our vices.
So I'm off today to the animal shelter to catch up on two missed weeks of being a "kittyoholic."
But that's a fun one I'm not giving up.

I just checked Aubrianne's blog and she said she guessed she should blog and tell everyone she made it home -- duh --- guess I should be telling you we are home too.
Made it home a day early actually. We were heading out from Carson City to Grants Pass when we noticed our motel reservation there was accidentally made for Monday night not Sunday night so when we got there we decided we would just drive on thru to Eugene instead of stopping there. So we cancelled our Monday reservation and put in a 500+ mile day and arrived in Eugene about 7:30 or so. It worked out better for everyone as Ken and La Chel had a really busy day Monday and wouldn't have been home until Monday at dinnertime so we would have had all day to waste until we would get to see them.
It was so good to see Aubrianne again and we got to look at a lot of her pictures that night.
We got to see pictures of some of her friends and all the families she stayed with and also some fantastic shots from Rome and her other extra excursions before she left Slovakia.
Didn't have time to look at all of her pictures and will look forward to seeing more at another time.
So we are home and getting back into our routine again. Lots of things on the agenda coming up so we are back to life at home. Fun to be gone - had a great time - but love being home again !!
Chester was glad we were home too !!
Hugs to all !

Can't believe it....48 years ! When I walked down that aisle so many years ago I never dreamed it would go so fast. Unbelieveable but here we are as of last Wednesday (the 18th ) It as been such a fun road to travel. With family there to support us and three wonderful children to light up our lives it has been a blast to say the least. Oh sure, there have been some rough times and everyone has their ups and downs but when the Lord entered our lives five years after we were married we found a whole new realm of our traveling on this good old earth.
We had a really fun anniversary this year - very different as we were on vacation and spent a really great day in Fresno, California celebrating. We were staying in Oakhurst for several nights and had just finished our visit to Yosemite and decided to drive into Fresno for the day. It was only about 50 miles from our motel. Years ago when we visited Bill and Willa Mitchell there they had taken us to a dinner theatre and we wondered if it would still be there so after some checking found out they were still there and open..... So we had a very delightful evening with a delicious buffet dinner and then watching a great performance of "Annie Get Your Gun" live on stage. What made it even more fun was we sat a the same table with a family that was celebrating their kids engagement so thru the evening we toasted them and they all toasted us. They were Christians too. Their wedding will be the first on November. It was just a really cool evening. We got back to the motel a little late but it was a beautiful warm evening so the drive was very nice coming back too.
Tonight we are in Carson City, Nevada. Got the capitol pics this am then drove up to Virginia City to play around. Tomorrow we will do some things here in Carson city and maybe drive up to Reno just for fun if we have time. The weather has been hot every day.... LOTS and LOTS of sunshine of course. It was 90 today and supposed to be 93 tomorrow!
Have a great day everyone !

I haven't blogged since we have been on vacation because we have been sending our e-mails and I think everyone that reads my blog is on our e-mail list anyway.
But this afternoon we are in Carson City and Bob is taking a nap so I will take time to jot off a note here. We had a beautiful drive today (if not a little "scary" at times) Our "lady" routed us up to Carson City on a route that looked quite a bit out of the way so we changed her mind and found a closer route. Closer yes and a bit more "interesting" to say the least.
If you ever decide to travel Hiway 4 from Yosemite to Carson City prepare yourself for quite an experience. It started out as a very windy horseshoe curved road but a nice wide road....
Took us a little longer than we planned and stopped for lunch at a cute little sandwich shop in Arnold, California.... glad the windy road was behind us - it was such a long windy road and miles from anywhere of any size. Asked the gal in the sandwich shop what they did for excitement up there and she said"work,, and we like to swim in the river. (She was just a young gal)
Sitting at the table next to us two young people were playing chess. Guess that is the exciting thing to do in the little wayside called Arnold, California. HOWEVER, little did we know this was not the end of this adventure. Later we were glad we had lunch there as we weren't "out of the woods" or down the mountain yet - in fact - it was just the beginning. As we headed on there was a sign saying something to the effect of ---- Very steep, windy, narrow road, not recommended for rigs longer than 23 feet in length. OK no problem, right, with our little Honda. What an exciting beautiful trip it ended up to be. It WAS a VERY steep, windy and narrow road..didn't even have a center line down it. Guess they figured we would feel guilty driving over it going around some of the corners hoping no one was coming the other direction. Also it was over the Sierra Nevada moutains so the drop off was RIGHT THERE and guess what - they don't believe in guard rails in California. At least not on this road. It was beautiful and after being in busy California around Sacramento was a quiet, gorgeous drive but quite a "pay attention to the road" situation for Bob around all those curves. It sort of puts you in touch with the beautiful creation God made before man got ahold of it and made the concrete jungles. But if you are in a hurry, listen to your GPS and trust her to get you where you want to go. It was indeed an interesting drive : ) Tonight we are in Carson City and will be off to get our second capitol tomorrow.

That's what the news calls our weather - I agree ! January in June.
Heard someone comment the other day they were really tired of this weather.
He was asked how long he has lived here. His reply "All My Life!" Yes, even the locals are getting tired of this spring. We did have summer though - one weekend in May -It actually got the upper 80's in Astoria. Those poor people who were out of town that weekend totally missed summer this year : ( But now school is out so it has to rain a bit before it can clear up!
Anyway we are on our way in two days to find some summer and land sakes is it ever out there. Bob just checked Sacramento (our first stop for several days) It is in the 90's and 100's. OK folks - Let's be realistic - we would totally be happy with mid 80's !! Or even upper 70's so we coastal people won't melt as we try to enjoy their city. But guess we shouldn't complain - we are seeking summer. Looks like we are going to get it. I just took out one pair of long pants and replaced it with another pair of capri's.
We actually enjoy our automatic air conditioning here on the coast but this year has been a bit trying even for us. We had another slight wind storm one day this week and one of the weakened trees came down on Hiway 101 between Cannon Beach and Seaside and hit a car. The road was blocked for some time but no one was injured. Now we have to contend with all the trees that almost toppled in the "big" storm and watch all those that are were on the verge of going over topple at the slightest wind. It has been a year to remember weather wise.
Chester came in the other night to "go to bed" and we just had to laugh and laugh at him. He had been out hunting I guess and it was pouring down rain. He looked so pitiful - he looked like he had been dunked in a barrel of water. He looked very skinny with his hair soaked on his back but his head and mane stuck out like little points sort like he had stuck a paw in an electric outlet.
Needless to say he got a GOOD rubdown before he was allowed on the bed.
OK - I'm off. Have lots to do today to get ready to go. Probably won't be back here before we leave. We have wifi at most if not all of our motels along the way so may check in somewhere along the way. WE'RE OFF TO FIND SUMMER !!