Patti, I would assume that if you deleted your cookies that it included the ones for here, so when you came back it was like the "first time." Now that you're logged in again, you shouldn't have that problem any more.
Assuming you're using Internet Explorer, click Tools | Internet Options. On the General tab, in the middle is a section called Temporary Internet Files. One of those choices is "Delete Files" and when you click that you get a box where you can check if you want to delete all offline content and when you click OK on that, it should delete the cache.
