I turned 60 on 9/11/11; for my birthday my husband Jim presented me with a wonderful surprise ~ a cruise to Alaska with my sons, their wives and their kids. Here we are, on the boat - Jim, me, Anthony and Crystal. It was great to be able to spend time with every one of them.

Home now, it seems all the tomatoes DIDN'T freeze!! So, I hauled out the wheelbarrow and filled it with lovely sweet red tomatoes (Jim can freeze this batch!) It seems the zillions of butternut squash did freeze however so the cows will be feasting yet.

My friend Phyllis and I are packing our bags (and dogs) and heading south to St. Louis on Friday for the Bouvier National Specialty -- this is the annual show for mostly conformation people who have Bouviers -- but they do provide a venue for herding which is where we'll be found with Trouble over the weekend. She's racked up a lot of titles this summer at the tender age of 2 so it'll be fun to see how she does next year as a more mature dog.