School

School started on Wednesday of this week. Emily could hardly contain herself, she was so excited for school.....Jeff will never admit it, but I personally think he was also excited for school....Mark is happy to be back at school because that means JROTC. The other is just stuff you have to put up with to get to do JROTC!! Now, me on the other hand, I was ready for the kids to go back to school, but I was not ready to start driving school bus again! My summer has gone by way to fast. I did not even come close to doing all the things I wanted and needed to get done. Oh well, maybe with my mornings free, I can get some of those things done!

Matt, Annette and Tristan

Annette's Mom, Grandfather, Aunt, and Uncle came to Alaska at the begining of August. Lori (Annette's mom) very thoughtfully took pictures of Matt, Annette, and Tristan and then brought copies of them to us! Below are a few of those pictures. Tristan is growing into a very cute little boy! Annette is looking very good! Their 2nd child is due at the end of Sept.

Mark is now 16

Yesterday was Mark's 16th birthday. I have mixed emotions about it! I don't like my kids to grow up, I want them stay little.......but on the other hand, Mark is becoming a very nice young man. Someone fun to hang out with. The dilema of parenthood.....

Yesterday we also activated school registrations for Jeff and Emily. Jeff is in 8th grade, and is only a few months away from being old enough to get his learners permit. That is a major reality check! Emily is going to be in 5th grade. WOW!

Mark's school registration was this morning. 10th grade. Eagle River HS does yearbooks in an interesting way. They don't hand the yearbooks at the end of the school year, but do give out autograph pages. Then at the beginning of the school year hand out the yearbook for the previous school year. This way the book has ALL of the school year activities, including graduation, in it. Kinda interesting!

Halibut Fishing Trip - Homer, AK

Jeff, Emily and I had a great fishing trip in Homer! We fished with Grandma and Grandpa and came home with 4 nice ones. Jeff had the biggest - 40lbs, Emily's fish was around 30lbs and I caught 2 that were around 15lbs each. Lot's of meat for the freezer!

Patience pays off

Ok, so I bought this Plumeria start in Hawaii 3 years ago. It was a very ugly, stick looking thing that stuck out of the soil in the pot that I had planted it in. It didn't have any leaves, and sometimes had this clear liguid oozing out of it. But I stuck with it......after about 6 months it got a few leaves, then within a couple of monthes, the leaves would fall off. I was getting discouraged. Then, about 2 years ago, the leaves were not falling off, they kept growing and getting bigger. Wahoo!

This past June I noticed this growth in the middle of the stalk. It looked like broccolli was growing! So, I did some checking online and found out that those would soon be flowers!!!!!!!! Boy was I excited.

So here are a couple of pictures of the flowers, taken this morning. I will be enjoying my Hawaii flowers for some time to come, there are lots of buds still growing!