We are in Sidney, BC, set to take the plane tomorrow morning to Tucson, AZ. Then on Tues. we will take a bus to San Carlos in Mexico and reaquaint ourselves with Cat's-Paw IV. It will be very nice to get back aboard, although we will have alot of work to get it ready to put it back in the water.

The last few days in Winderemere were very busy, my Mom arrived and we had a wonderful visit, we managed to get some four generation shots. Then Barry showed up (the car made it) and he spent a day visiting with Trish, Graeme and Quinn. Quinn did not crawl or get a tooth before I left and I miss his bouncy enthusiaism. Trish was working very hard on getting her knee back in working order and I am sure she still is.

We stopped in Vancouver and saw some sailing buddies from Mexico, Phil and Trudi on Williwaw. They had Williwaw shipped up from Mexico on Dockside and enjoyed her over the summer. One of the great joys I had from traveling was meeting wonderful people and it was so nice to extend our acquaintance by visiting them in their home.

Quinn checking out a ring his great grandma made, good taste buddy.

Once we reached Vancouver Island we raced around buying boat parts. We visited with Barry's Mom and both of his sisters. One night I sorted all our clothing out in Sherran's living room. We emptied all our suitcases and packed away all of our work clothes and our cool weather duds to take to our storage area, then I packed our cruising gear and all our boat stuff and managed to close the bags. We are in a hotel about 10 minutes from the airport tonight so we do not have any excuse for missing the flight.

Oh, I have been working on a tropical fish cross stitch for Quinn all summer. I bought the kit in Calgary in early June and have been working very hard. I basically became obsessed with getting it done. I cross stitched from Calgary to Winnipeg to Cape Breton to Yellowknife to Windermere. I stitched in the car, on the bus, on the plane, on the ferry, on a sailboat, in bed, in front of the TV, and while I waited for appointments. Trish and I visited a framer last week and picked out a frame and I put the last stitch in about a week ago. I felt pretty good about getting in finished. Yippee!!!

We had an outing to the hot springs today. Quinn had a great time as did the rest of us. It is such a relaxing place to go. There were lots of little kids there and watching the toddlers play in the shallow end was entertaining. Trish went in the really hot pool and did her knee exercises, it is coming along but she has to work at making her quads work and stretching out her hamstring.

Quinn is almost crawling. He has been getting up on his hands and knees but just has not figured out how to move forward yet. It won't be long now. He is also cutting some teeth and I wonder if he will either crawl or get a tooth before I leave on Tuesday morning. Barry supposedly left Fort Simpson today and is headed south. He should be here sometime on Monday.

It was a beautiful day yesterday and we went and played in the leaves. The leaves here are huge compared to the ones up north. It was not hard to accumulate a large pile and then almost cover Quinn in them. We also finished digging up Trish's garden, harvesting the rest of the carrots, beets and onions. We had picked the peppers the other day and made a batch of green salsa. It was pretty tasty, it had 10 home grown jalapenos in it and I was pretty scared to taste the concoction, but it was very tasty and not too hot at all.

Last Tuesday we went to see Trish's doctor in Cranbrook. He was not happy with the amount of swelling that was still in her knee and he told her she should still be on her crutches until she could walk without a limp. That was not happy news and Trish was very grumpy for the rest of the day. She has been attempting to remember to use her crutches in the house but she is not very good at it and she is getting tired of Graeme and I getting after her for walking around too much. I keep threatening to take a video of her so that she can see how she is walking.

We did a developmental questionnaire for Quinn, at six months, the other day. He is doing everything a normal bouncing baby boy should be doing and believe me he does love to bounce. He is rolling all over the floor now and he demonstrated his turning techinique on the furniture the other day, pushing off with his feet and swiveling his body on his back to get out of the corner, Trish and I were fascinated.

Barry, in the mean time, is still working North of 60. Here he is checking out the Merv Hardie Ferry with Michel Lafrance, the Regional Superintendent of the Department of Transportation, Government of the Northwest Territories, (he must be taking the picture) which crosses the mighty Mackenzie River. Everyone that drives to Yellowknife has to go across the Mackenzie River which drains the eighth largest freshwater lake in the world, Great Slave Lake. The Mackenzie moves the water past the Arctic Circle and deposits it into the Arctic Ocean. For the past number of years there has been a movement afoot in Yellowknife to put a bridge across the Mackenzie, it is going to be built right where the red bouy is in the background of the picture ( I can't pick it out, but it is probably there). Barry says they started surveying last week and they will start bringing in materials this winter and the bridge is scheduled to be finished in 2010. There was a big dump of snow the previous week in Hay River and Yellowknife but it has all but disappeared here. Barry's last day of work in Fort Simpson, where he is currently stationed, will be Oct. 18. On the 19 he will fly to Yellowknife to get his hip checked out again and then return to Fort Simpson and start making his way south. I am hoping he will be here on Oct 21 or 22. It will be interesting to see if the doctor in Yellowknife thinks he is a candidate for a new hip.

Well I know you have all been wondering about "the car". Greame and Trish bought a 65 mustang and Graeme is in the process of restoring it. He is at the stage where the car has been completely stripped and he has straightened the frame, now he is working on the body panels. The watchamadoeys are finished and the thingamjiggers are perfect, that is about as far as my car smarts takes me.

Graeme is also a surfer, (being a cool Aussie dude, of course he is into surfing). Trish got him an Indo board for his birthday. The board is a snazzy oval shaped piece of plywood that you put a roller underneath and you practise your balance on it. Greame is quite amazing to watch on it, that has been our entertainment for the last few days. Quinn is going to get some yams tonight for his Thanksgiving dinner, Trish and I are pretty excited about that!! The turkey is smelling, the pumpkin pie is ready and we have garden potatoes for mashing. Life is good!

Graeme is currently trying to decide what colour to make his car. He wants to know what you think? Please e-mail me at ann_lange@yahoo.com to register your vote for a black or a red mustang. THIS IS IMPORTANT, he really wants to know.

Trish and I have been indulging in recovery from surgery using the Grey's Anatomy method. The fellow renting the downstairs suite owns season 1, 2 and 3 of Grey's Anatomy, a TV show about interns in a hospital. We have just completed season 3 after a marathon week of uninterrupted shows, no commercial, no breaks. It was great, I guess! Trish managed to sit still and put her leg up most of the time, so that is a REALLY GOOD thing. There were days when I had cried so much from watching all sorts of wonderful actors loose their limbs, their lives and their lovers that I had a headache. Graeme seemed quite disgusted some days to find us sniffling away when he walked in for lunch.

Graeme cut his head with a pipe at work today and when he came home, I had immediate worries about thrombosis and shock and the possibility that we might have to amputate his head if the cut became infected and became septic!! Oh my, oh my, oh my, way too many hours watching that doctor stuff. In all seriousness, he had a huge bump with a cut on his forehead and Trish bandaged it up and we made him lie down and put his feet up and he put ice on the bump until the colour returned to his face, he looked a big green when he came in. He complained that the mixed veggies that Trish had been using for her knee weren't the right shape for his head and we thought that the remainder of the ice cream might do the trick. He could just lick off the drips as the ice cream melted down his face.

Trish's knee is coming along. She is able to walk around without crutches, she says she feels like Uncle Bruce when she is walking. We went into town today and bought groceries for Thanksgiving. That was her first foray into town since the accident and she seemed to handle it quite well, although she did say tonight that she needed to put her leg up and rest.

Why don't they have medium sized turkeys, we had a choice between a $10.00 turkey or a $30.00 turkey, what we would have liked was a $20.00 turkey, but there was no such animal in the freezer we were checking out. Do you think they don't grow medium ones??? Hope you all find just the size of turkey that you are looking for and enjoy the process of getting it ready and sharing it with other people.