We have this beat up looking birdhouse but its been the home of the violet green swallow since I have been in Alaska.  Every year birdie parents seek the safety of it to raise their young.  I was able to capture both mom and dad in this one picture.
     Last year we were shocked to come home and see the bird house up ended and hanging by one screw to the connecting L bracket to the tree.  Apparently a bear wanted to get the young out of the bird house, climbed the tree and when the bird house tipped he fell, landing on my flower pot ( and destroying it) and leaving.  We thought that it was destroyed as the house was disconnected from the base and put it in the trash, it was then that I heard the little "cheeping" of baby birds.  I put on some rubber gloves and sure enough there were three babies in there, we were doubtful that they would survive.  We got the house back together, with my rubber gloves got the babies safely back in the house and attached it to the tree again and waited.  To our surprise and delight the parents came back and started to feed and take care of the babies.
     I was happy to see this year that they are willing to give that house a go again and with any luck will be the proud parents of baby birdies again.

Spring and Summer are my favorite times of the year and I think alot of it has to do with the flower, our roses in particular.  Part of the reason they always bloom so nice right away is that we over winter them in a greenhouse in Anchorage.  We get to enjoy them for the spring and summer months and then they are safely tucked away for the winter and voila when we pick them up at the end of May we have wonderful blossoms.  Another plus of this is that if they happen to die in the hands of the greenhouse they replace the plant at no cost.  While the majority of these beautiful blossoms have no fragrance we have a few that are wonderfully scented, the lavender color ones have the most beautiful color and scent and we have a light cream colored one that smells like lemons.

     Once again we have let life get in the way of blogging.  I have decided that rather than list all of the reasons why I haven't written anything on here I would just ignore that fact all together, works for me!
It has been a crazy few months the worst part being when our crazy goober Chadish decided that he wanted to make a trip to the vet shortly before Christmas.  It was than we found out that his spleen was enlarged and he needed emergency surgery so we left him at the vet clinic after being told that if they open him up and he is full of cancer it might be a good idea to not wake him up.  Needless to say I cried...I cried allot!  Ben was doing a wonderful job being my rock all the while he was falling apart on the inside. 
     The good news is he woke from the surgery with his spleen removed and about a 3lb mass with it.  Than we were told that they had to do a biopsy and send it away to see if it was cancerous or not, that would take a week.  I will be the first to admit I was not the person to be around that week.  Chadish on the other had was enjoying it because we felt so bad for him and his huge scar on his belly that he got more treats in that one week than in his entire life.  He was also showing off his scar proudly, all you had to do was ask to see his belly and he would roll up on his back and show you.  He would say "here it is...you feel real sorry for me right?  You could give me a cookie and feel allot better!"  It did make it allot easier to clean the stitches though. 
     The Great News was when we were phoned on Christmas Eve morning and told that the biopsy showed everything was benign, we cried some more and celebrated with you got it....cookies!  That was the best Christmas present we could have received.

     The rest of the winter was thankfully uneventful albeit long....really freakin long.  We ended up breaking the record of snowfall (like I cared about that one)  and it got to the point that I was wondering if we were going to have to melt it because we had no where else to put it.  It was a happy day when it all melted and we started to see the mountain daisy's.  For those of you that don't know that terminology mountain daisy's are those wonderful dog presents that get snow upon and you cant find till all the snow melts.  Who would have thought that dog droppings could make me so happy!  I say its the little things in life! 
     We also know that its spring by the mangled bird feeder in the backyard.  We make sure that every April we no longer fill up the bird feeders, even when the birds are whacking the windows and the squirrel is very vocally sending death threats to me through the window telling me I better get my act in gear and fill them up!  We have bigger critters come into the yard.  Sometime during one night the bear was unimpressed by the lack of seeds in the feeder that it ripped it down from where it was hanging and must have stomped on the thing.  He/she also made an entrance through and an exit out of our cheesy orange snow fence we have up right now.  Its more or less to make us feel like our dogs are contained in the backyard.  They are  never allowed out without supervision though because Chadish has proved if something on the other side gets his attention he will just go through the fence.  Yep, you got it....a big chadish size hole right through the fence!  Dax on the other hand will just stick her head under and proudly show us just what she can do!  We live with a bunch of "what a dogs"  Tanna is a mommy's baby and is much more concerned as to where I am and not looking for an escape route.  She is the old doggie now and knows just how big and bad the outside world can be for run aways, plus  we have peanut butter cookies here!  But in her heart she knows she's a big bad ganster dog.

As for Dax well she knows she is cute.









Susan and I were in Denver the week of October 10th. While there we toured the Coors Miller Brewery in Golden, CO. The tour is self guided and provied a wonderful look into the process by which the basic ingrediants of grain, hops, and water become transformed in to beer. At the end of the tour is the tasting room where you are provided three 6 ounce samples of the many beers brewed at the facility. For those that don't know, Coors brews, Blue Moon, Killian's Red, as well as the Coors Banquet. It was a fun afternoon and since Sue doesn't like beer I got her samples too.

There are positive and negative things about a blog. The positive is its a great way to keep in touch with family and friends. The negative is if you let life get in the way, posts dont get made and your followers stop following. So I am going to try to be better about keeping the blog up to date. This summer was a busy one with a lot of yard projects and then this fall Ben had to go to Washington DC for two weeks and Denver for 3 weeks for work. Luckily I was able to spend one week with Ben in Washington and a week in Denver. While I was there we got to do some fun things together one of the most fun things was when we got to feed the giraffes at the Cheyanne mountain zoo in Colorado.

Poor Chadish had surgery on Thursday and although the old plastic cone head collars were more destructive and embarrassing for him he isn't so sure about this donut either. I on the other hand love it, and will not have to re plaster any walls this time! It really is a great invention though, its soft and when they lay down it acts like a pillow and really doesn't alter their vision like those old ones. He is a typical male though and needed allot of attention and sympathy, we had a very sleepless night and if I stopped petting him he would cry. He really is a lovable guy and hard not to feel sorry for though.

For Christmas this year Ben surprised me with tickets to Seattle for the Harry Potter Exhibitions, which was terrific. The only downside was that you were not allowed to take pictures. They had allot of the props used in all the movies and you could throw a quiddich ball, pull a mandrake, sit in Hagrids chair. Go through the forbidden forest and see the triwizard cup and the things used in the Yule ball. These are just a few of the neat things. Since it was at the Pacific Science Center and they were bringing in the Star Wars Exhibition next we got a surprise visit from the storm troopers, Darth Vadar and Obi won.

During one of our evening strolls we came across this street performer who, with just some pails and a couple cow bells actually made some good music.

This guy was really convincing too, he actually looked like a bronze statue that had gotten the petina with age.

The Seattle space needle, we were up to the top a couple of times and had a wonderful meal up at the top.

We also visited the aquarium and saw this cutie and allot of other fun things.

Here is Ben with one of the local Octopus's

Here is ET from the science fiction museum.

A flamingo from the woodland zoo.

Here is an orchid from the butterfly room at the Pacific Science Center.

Once again we have let life get in the way of keeping the blog up to date! Summer of 2010 was a really busy one but not without some fun moments. Our good friends Dan and Susan have a beautiful piece of lake front property that they have so kindly let us park our camper on for most of the summer. There we were able to help them clean it up and salvage a bunch of the wood to burn during the winter. We also did a little fishing, had a few nice times around the fire pit and did allot of barbecuing. Chadish even managed to get in a swim! And did you know that wet dogs are the most affectionate? We did one scuba dive but soon realized why we like the warm water diving of Hawaii better and were a little disappointed with the low visibility of the lake water, but it was fun and Ben was able to see one of the larger fish inhabitants.

This morning we had a nice surprise while we were eating breakfast. We looked out the window and we had a mamma moose and her yearling calf visit us. As our backyard is a work in progress we put up a snow fence to keep our dogs in and the dogs and people that use the trail behind our property out. Apparently the moose didn't think much of this deterrent and just hopped in, ate some leaves and hopped back out. This really was a nice surprise as I have been in Alaska since June of 2004 and this is the first time we had moose come to visit in our yard. I love Alaska!