I Like #304

Today's prompt from LeeAnna is about Father's day and memories of our fathers.  I'm so very very lucky to still have and be very close to both of my parents and right now they are traveling through Alaska for several months.  

They just got finished driving the Dalton highway up from Fairbanks to north of the Arctic Circle and apparently it was very very beautiful but the road was very dusty dirty!

I have lots of fun memories of my dad. My mom and sister and I were all skiiers and my dad wasn't, but I remember at our ski races, he would put on a down vest and a pair of tennis shoes and hike up the ski run to the bottom of the race course so he could cheer for us.  And lest you think he was too sweet, I also have very vivid memories from times my mom was out of town of him running up and down the hallway between my room and my sister's room madly flipping our light switches on and off and singing "ITS TIME TO GET UP ITS TIME TO GET UP ITS TIME TO GET UP" to the tune of Reveille.  And of him hiking along with us in the high desert and gathering up the itchy scratchy petals of fourwing saltbush and throwing them at us by the handful.

We've still been getting tons of rain, and my flowers are doing the most amazing amazing things.  These are Dahlias I cut early in the week.

Along with some zinnias.

But then this amazing giant dinnerplate dahlia really opened up.  She's 8.5" across with the most gorgeous curling petals and colr range.  I was going to leave her in the garden, but we have severe weather forecast for tonight (hail, thunderstorms, and tornados), so I went ahead and cut the few more that were open in the garden so at least they wouldn't get hail damaged.  Now they're brightening my office.

The pups are good-earlier this week they were trying to help a lot while I was sewing.  And late last week I spent a few days at a conference here in OKC, but I did get a chance to go for a short hike early on Saturday with Cash and Brett before we got rained out.

Fingers crossed we don't have damage from tonight's storms, and click over to LeeAnna's for more things to like!