Proud Opa and Oma with Samuel on our arrival Christmas evening. Or is it Grandpa? It is definitely Oma. Doesn't she look happy?

Some touching moments of Samuel with his mother and father. We love the way that Samuel and his mother are looking at each other, and isn't it sweet how his father is kissing the top of Samuel's head while he sleeps? We think so!

We became grandparents with the birth of our first grandchild, Samuel Elliott Botting, born to Chris and Julee at 2:09 a.m. Tuesday (B.C. time), Dec. 12, 2006. We are thrilled at the little fellow! When we visited between Christmas and New Year's, he loved to curl up just like in the womb, as shown here. Now, we have to decide whether we are grandpa and grandma or opa and oma or some mix of the two. Evita is used to oma and Dave is used to grandpa in our respective backgrounds.

Evita dressed up as a zebra on a school day when everyone was supposed to dress up like some kind of animal. We took a heavy plastic bag and added electrical tape for stripes and felt ears and she wore a sweater with "zebra stripes!"

The weather was fantastic on Thanksgiving weekend -- then on Thursday morning, we woke up to snow... and the leaves still changing colour on the trees! At least we didn't get 10 inches, like they did in Fort Erie. Or two feet, like they did in Buffalo!

On Thanksgiving Day we visited family in Toronto. Evert and Sandy joined us at Irene's. Mariel also joined us along with a friend from Queen's who comes from Kerrisdale too and couldn't go home for the holiday weekend. It was a push getting there as Dave preached for the Thanksgiving Day service. Traffic was heavy as people were already starting to head home from cottage country in the early afternoon. But it was worth it. Here we are on a walk with Spencer, Elliott, and Mya on bikes and with Irene walking their dog.

We went for our traditional colour walk at Vandewater Park on the Sunday of Thanksgiving weekend. The weather was incredible -- warm, even hot as we walked. The colours were really vivid this year. We also ran into the Roeper family there, as we often do!

The grand opening ceremony was held in the school's huge gym with a mass choir led by Fred Riemersma. About 800 people attended the ceremony.

QCHS held its grand opening on Sept. 23rd. The building is about 40,000 square feet and cost about $4.7 million. It is located on Wallbridge Loyalist Road just past the railroad tracks north of Highway 2. It's a really nice building with lots of space and a huge gym.

While in Ottawa, we spotted this giant spider near the National Art Gallery. No one seemed to be very shook about the spider - panhandlers are harder to handle, actually - so Evita and Leo posed with it.

We also visited Cathy and Leo VanArragon just before school started. Here we are in a park behind the parliament buildings. We had super weather and a really good visit together and shared dinner together at a Vietnamese restaurant (a first for us), which had very interesting cuisine!

Dave's sister Jane visited during August. We went to the Gut, which is a waterfall through a rocky gorge near Coe Hill (close to Bancroft). We had a lot of fun checking it out! Jane makes an effort to visit every summer, and we always appreciate that. Dave and Jane went for their traditional breakfast at Cora's before she headed home to Detroit.

This picture comes from the first day of our trip. We found this sign at a small park in Michigan on our way to Chicago and points west. Note the frogs on Evita's T-Shirt (from Vancouver!).

On the way home we experienced a terrific thunderstorm in Limon, Colorado. Our tent took a terrific beating from the wind (we were watching from the car). Afterwards, we almost set our sleeping bags on fire trying to dry them in the campground laundromat, so we went to a neighbouring hotel for the night, the only night we spent in a hotel. The flyof the tent leaks since that night.

Evita is interested in prairies, especially tall grass prairies, so we visited a tall grass prairie preserve in Kansas on the way back home. This is still original prairie, looking almost exactly the same as it did 130+ years ago (except for the tour bus). It gave us a new perspective on prairies and on cattle. The guide considered trees to be weeds and cattle resting in the shade under trees weren't doing their job, which is to put on weight eating the rich prairie grass.

Dave stands by a huge tire, used on trucks in the Kennecott copper mine near Salt Lake City and the world's largest open pit mine. The hole is one of the few man-made things that can be seen from the space shuttle. It's one honking big hole!

Dave decided he had to float in Salt Lake. The lake is 5 or 6 times as salty as the ocean, and you can float in the water just like in the Dead Sea.

Cedar Breaks is 10,500 feet up or more. The park has alpine meadows full of spring wildflowers, which are at their peak in early to mid-July, which was when we visited. The guide told us that 6 weeks earler, there had been up to 6 feet of snow across the road! The flowers were gorgeous - a garden planted by God!

Dave, standing under the Sand Arch, which was located inside a cluster of rocks that were reached through a narrow passage between the rocks. The arches at Arches National Park are quite amazing! There are arches all over the place.

Bryce Canyon at sunrise - this is why we travelled to Utah in the first place. Evita had seen a gorgeous National Geographic photo of Bryce that could be downloaded to use as wallpaper on our computer, and she said, "I want to go there!" So we did. And the photograph didn't mislead us, Bryce was spectacular! We also visited Arches and Zion National Parks as well as Cedar Breaks for the alpine flowers. Each was spectacular in its own way.