How would you like a balcony like this? Dave took this picture of Old Fort Garry Place in Winnipeg. The building is about the size of a small city block and loaded with similar statues. He just had to take a picture!

While Dave was in Winnipeg, he went flying with ChristianWeek's group publisher, Brian, who is an airplane enthusiast. The flight was in a little two-seater Luscombe built in the 1940s, a collector's item that Brian had just finished restoring. The engine was reworked and needed to be run full bore for a while, so they flew until it started to get too hot and landed at a glider club where they watched gliders take off and land while their engine cooled off before heading back to the home field. It was a lot of fun!

Dave flew out to Winnipeg for meetings of ChristianWeek and then came back via Thunder Bay, where he visited a church that we are interested in from a design point of view. Remember Toronto's moose? Well, Winnipeg apparently has polar bears. Here is Dave with a Reporter Bear!

We had unexpected visitors for two and a half weeks in May and early June. We took in Abbey when her father died early Sunday morning on the long May weekend, and her mother Liz joined us a few days later from Victoria, B.C. It was a stretch for us, but it was the right thing to do and it went really well. I did the funeral (and helped to make the funeral arrangements) as well.

This is Sandy. She and Evert have bought a house just off Yonge St. near the 401. These are her twin boys, Garrett and Mitchell. You can see that their faces are a little different, but I am not sure which is which. (this Thanksgiving (2006) I showed the picture to Sandy and she said Garrett is on the left and Mitchell is on the right.)

We celebrated my mom's 80th birthday while we were in Grand Rapids for March Break. Her birthday is actually on April 5th, but we weren't able to come then, so the family got together while we were there. Mom blew out all her candles. Not 80, though. That would be cruel.

The party was held at Tom and Melanie's. Here are some of the adults around the table in the dining room.

I thought that we would start a blog, so I finally figured out how to do it. I thought I'd start with a picture of our new car - a 2005 Chrysler Sebring Touring. It has a V6 engine and is about a foot longer than our Mazda, so it is a BIG car for us! It has air and cruise control and power windows and locks (you have to have power windows and power locks and so forth to have cruise control and I really wanted cruise control for travelling!). We like it so far and are looking forward to travelling in it this summer. We are hoping to go to Utah this summer after Evita takes a week-long course.