I'm back again...and good news!

We were only home 2 days and then left again, this time Dan and I drove down to Lake Park, IA, my hometown and the home of my parents, brother & sister-in-law. Dan had really wanted to visit his grandparents while he was here and I was able to arrange the 3 days off from work, although the quilts are calling me! Anyway, we had some fun times and memories together. It is so beautiful right now, the peak of the growing season, so the fields and landscape are beautiful. Maybe not to everyone, but to me, I'm glad this is where I came from. I love the wide open spaces, I think I've said this before. Trees and mountains are my next favorite. Ocean shore has a beauty of its own, which I am less familiar with. We did some rambling around on the farmland that I grew up on, no one lives in the house that I called home for 17 years and it is falling into disrepair and is uninhabitable now. Sad. Those 2 upstairs windows were in the bedroom that I shared with my sister nearly all of those years.

This is part of the view from our old front yard, can you make out the wind turbines dotting the landscape now? They, of course, were not there back in those days. They are like the new breed of windmills. Our house was on a bit of a hill (not that there are any huge hills there but there are some slopes) and at night from my bedroom window I could see a blinking light about 20 miles away on the top of a restaurant (The Hilltop), so that gives an idea of the vista possibility.

We had hollyhocks growing in the yard, and Jan and I used to make these little hollyhock dolls out of them. See the 2 little eyes at the base of the bud? Sadly, no arms, but I used to think they were kind of like fairies so they didn't need arms, right?

Another great treat is the mulberries that my mom and dad still go out to pick from the trees by that house, and we had a super delicious dessert made from them. I never hear about mulberries growing other places, are they becoming extinct?

It was a very good visit, and I have more to share over the next few days. Right now Dan is getting his stuff packed up so we can take him to the airport for his flight back to Reno. We will see him again in just about 3 weeks when we go out to San Francisco, so I'm trying not to get sad.

And now for the really excellent news, that I have been trying so hard to stay calm about, and not jinx anything by hoping too much--Brita and Ben are moving to Minnesota!!! Yeah! I still can't believe that we will be seeing them for longer than a visit! Just a little more than a month, and they will be heading this direction. It helps take some of the sting out of saying goodbye to Dan tonight!