Going to see my daughter

I am so excited right now I can't speak! I just booked a flight to Long Beach CA. Seems my daughter will be there from Chicago for a wedding. I haven't seen her since Christmas of 2005 when she and my grandkids spent Christmas with me in Sandpoint ID. Her name is Jessica and my only child. Just turned 30 on April 24th. I just drank a beer in celebration so hopefully I don't get too mushy and sentemental on you. My best friend Doreen also lives in Long Beach CA and I will be staying at her home. Boy am I turning into the traveling guru. It's funny too since I hate to fly. I leave for Florence Oregon this Friday to visit my parents who are in their 80's. Jessica would rather live in Long Beach CA but since there are custody issues with her ex, she has to stay in Chicago. She despises the winters in Chicago but likes the rest of the seasons. She has had a bit of a rough life. She lost her Dad at age 17 so she's just got good ole Mom left. She's an only child too which makes it harder on her. I guess that's my fault though. I only wanted one child and it had to be a girl or I was sending it back LOL. My Dad has red hair and my ex-mother-in-law had red hair. I was afraid to have a boy with red hair. Life is rough enough without being called a carrot top growing up. So I thought girls can have beautiful long red hair and not get teased. OK I know I drank a beer on an empty stomach so I better stop blogging now. I just am so excited about seeing Jessica again in late August.

Whew, what a day

Wow did it rain hard last night. The wind blew and howled. We have lots of trees around the house including twelve large Willows. They are around 15 years old and I love to watch them sway in the wind. They drop large branches and we use them for our outside fire pit. Jerry just planted 20 more Western Larch tree plugs (We live on 5 acres) There must be 30 Spruce trees too. The house is basically surrounded by trees on three sides which gives us privacy. As I sit at my computer in the guest bedroom I can look out the sliding glass door to the North East and see lots of green open land with Mount Spokane in the background. It's very quiet here away from the hustle and bustle of town which is about 15 minutes away. The one drawback of living here is that there are Coyotes almost every night doing that horrible howling. We have two outside cats and I make sure we still have them both the following morning. They are only about a year old. Smokey and Ashley (brother and sister). We also have a dog named Happy. She's a Red Healer. What a loyal and obedient dog she is. She loves to play disc golf with the guys down the road but she's almost 11 years old (77 human years). In fact she keeps coming over to the window here and looking at me. I just realized she hasn't been fed tonight (not that she really needs a lot of food. She's a bit overweight, kind of like us when we get older ya know? Anyway I better go feed her before she wears her feet off pacing. She wasn't interested in food, she wanted inside. Anyway back to the disc golf course down the road. Happy will join in the game by circling the disc after it lands. She lets you know where it is. Very helpful at times when the disc ends up in the weeds or hard to see spots. At home she has her own disc that she knows she can pick up and bring back to be thrown for her again. Smart dog! Problem is when she goes down the street and runs around the course then home again she has a hard time standing up the next morning. So..... we have asked the owner of the disc golf course to call us or send her home if she shows up there. She's sneaky too. Slips away when we aren't looking. No we don't have any fences to keep her home. We give her glucosamine for her joints each morning and we think this is helping her walk a little easier. Well I am off to the living room to watch my Netflix movie "Charlie Wilson's War with of course my favorite actor, Tom Hanks! Whoo Whooooooo!

Barb's first attempt @ blogging

I am not sure how this works exactly but will learn just as all you other bloggers did. So for now I am just leaving it like this.