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Saturday, May 03, 2008

Birthday Party



I have more pictures - you can see most of them at online gallery now that I've finally figured out how to do it. I won't try to identify everyone; some you'll recognize and others you haven't seen before. It was a good mix of friends and family. My computer geek friend John (the one with the new blog) took over at the barbecue, Reno and Lyman brought potato salad, extra chairs, and took most of the pictures. I took a few but not as good. The girls' mom and dad both dropped in; Tasha brought a couple of her friends. Dawn and family were there of course - she planned the whole thing.

If that gallery link works, I'll add it to the sidebar and refer to it whenever I have new pictures. It's certainly simpler than trying to post them all here.

This one (at top of blog) is 3 generations. Me, son Tim, grandson Wesley (girls' dad), and granddaughter Samantha (Jim's oldest). The only generation missing is the girls and I plan to see them next Thursday. Actually, there's still another generation; my mom will be 96 in July but it's a little far to travel from New York to California for a barbecue. Of course my oldest, Carol, wasn't there and she's still missed. Today is the one year anniversary of her death.

Jim's leave was postponed at the last minute. He was home by the Monday following and we managed to squeeze in coffee together (I didn't bring my camera because I didn't know I'd be seeing them). He left the next day to take his wife, Melissa, on a well deserved short vacation. His two youngest are growing like weeds. Zachary is a very mellow kid. He smiles constantly. Jonathan is about what you'd expect of an almost 2 year old. Adorable but active doesn't begin to describe him.

I'm seeing quite a bit of oldest granddaughter these days. She's busy with work, school, putting purple streaks in her hair (on her it looks good), but still managed to join Tim and me for a late breakfast yesterday.

Our garden is doing well. Destiny's strawberry plant has produced three berries which she has eaten. It's her plant although we may steal a couple for ourselves later on. It's doing so well I may pick up a few more - enough for a shortcake later on. The tomato plants are growing and the bell pepper has two tiny peppers.
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Our weather continues beautiful but erratic. High 80's one day and down to mid 60's the next. Typical spring.

Much of the country is not so fortunate. Southern California is once again dealing with fires. Maine is flooding. The entire mid-country is going through more tornadoes and there have been fatalities in north central Arkansas. CNN ran a clip of a tornado very close to our friends Karen H. and Diane and her sisters. So far as I know, they weren't affected but it did touch down fairly close to all of them. More are expected today. I heard that Arkansas has now passed Oklahoma as "tornado alley". Please keep all of them in your thoughts and prayers.

I'm now working with a newer computer. I'd forgotten that I had the girls' machine. John took it home with him, performed his magic, and swapped it for the one I'd been struggling with. This is much better. It had never worked well for the girls but we think it just needed a thorough housecleaning. I'd bought it used and it was probably full of viruses from the beginning.

We're leaving in a few minutes to go shopping and maybe have breakfast out somewhere. I'd better close this out, put my shoes on, and finish getting ready.

Thanks to all for hanging in with me all this time.

12 comments:

alice said...

Happy Birthday, Ann! I'm glad that you had such a good celebration. Here's to many more!

ipm said...

great picture of you all... :)))

sending much love...

Susie said...

What a nice picture of all of you!
Glad you had a wonderful celebration.
Glad your computer issues seem to be solved. I've missed your posts.
xo

Bee said...

Happy Birthday to you!!! Glad to see you online again. Love the pics. Thinking of you and the family...

The Future Was Yesterday said...

"Thanks to all for hanging in with me all this time."
I think you have that backwards, Ann.:) Thank YOU for making time out of your tremendously busy schedule to hang out with US!:)

clairesgarden said...

love your 'generations'. its so nice when families all get together. glad you all enjoyed your bar-b-q!!

Anonymous said...

Nice to see everyone looking happy and healthy! Fingers crossed that things keep going so well :-)

Pat said...

Good to see you around again Ann.

Merle said...

Dear Ann ~~ So glad to see you back
and glad that you had a nice birthday
Nice that your friend Dawn organized
the party for you. I hope your computer problems are over fo good now, The photos were nice. Take care. my friend, Much love, Merle.

Carole Burant said...

Dearest Ann,

So glad to see you posting...I loved seeing all your pictures taken at the birthday party:-) Looks like everyone was having a lot of fun and I'm so glad this was done for you!! I've no doubts that you really miss Carol a lot, especially on these occasions. Hard to believe she's been gone a year already. You've gone through so much in that one year.

You're so ahead of us where growing plants is concerned...we can't plant anything in the garden until at least the start of June. We can still get frost until the end of May!! Call me over when you have enough strawberries to make a shortcake! hehe

How terrific that you've now got a better working computer...isn't it wonderful to have someone who knows all about computers and can fix them up! lol I don't know what I'd do without my son Shawn...he's a computer programmer and knows a computer inside and out so I always rely on him if my computer gives me any problems:-)

Take care and looking forward to your next post! xox

illahee said...

hi ann,

sorry i haven't commented lately. it seems like you had a great celebration!

Andrea said...

one year!
it still feel like yesterday.
It has been five and a half for my sister and i still cry like it just happened.

hugs
everyone there looks wonderful