I see you are having difficulty paying attention to the instructions. Where I left you last year, for those of you who got the last letter, was can you believe it, last Christmas. For those of you who did not get it, I apologize and naturally I blame Canada Post because it was their fault. Therefore, you must all get email accounts if you haven’t already done so because with a click of the button everyone has a copy instantly. At Canada Post you must pay whatever the rate is which is about 46 cents PER LETTER. The Internet is virtually free. For the convenience of paying 46 cents PER LETTER my snail mail or should I say Christmas letter dutifully was placed in the mailbox on the 6 Dec 99. This letter contained a small Christmas card and four pages of text. Some of the letters stunning, as it may seem slipped through the keen eyes of Canada Post and miraculously appeared at their destination address within about a week. The remainders however, were not so fortunate. RETURN TO SENDER stated the stamp of the Postal Grinch because 46 cents was not enough. They wanted more! My letter had an extra page. All this at 46 cents PER LETTER that if Canada Post had their way would have to be sent in October to get there by Christmas. Now that makes the letter timely and relevant doesn’t it? Therefore, this year I will have to keep my letter to three pages and you don’t get a Christmas card. In addition if you suddenly start having difficulty reading this letter then you know I am trying to save space.

Last year I left you hanging about Thanksgiving. A year however, is long enough but I won’t talk about Thanksgiving 99, which by the way was very fun. I will talk about the Thanksgiving family reunion 2000. Typically this event is conducted in the Saskatoon area and it was done there again this year. It started with a brunch at the College in Rosthern and was to continue with a pilgrimage tour of when our Grandparents first came to Canada, followed by a wiener roast at Uncle Jake’s farm. The day turned out to be a great success. Naturally there was much resistance in the beginning. The kids come to the reunion to socialize with their cousins, play sports, swim in the pool and perhaps partake with a cool one for us parent kids. When it came time to explain the program to the younger kids, I explained we would be going to brunch. No surprise here as we always go for brunch but this time we were going to Rosthern. This is a little different but, hey ya gotta eat. I then told them we will be doing a pilgrimage that will take all day and we will be doing just boring things such as visiting the graveyard. For a brief period you could hear a pin drop from the shock of the moment then the whining began. This is also a small moral community where sometimes the fun is a little restrictive and the beers are just not seen. Needless to say there was much whining when it came time to do the "family pilgrimage" by parents and children alike. Ron, Gord and I quickly attempted to come up with an escape plan with our ever-optimistic children anticipating the success of their fathers. Naturally the ever-ubiquitous mothers thwarted our escape plan. This is typically followed up by the usual scolding, with fathers and kids pouting as we reluctantly head to the graveyard. From there we went to the train station and heard some interesting stories. We went to my Grandparents first house in Canada and then went to where my mother went to school and heard more rich history. By the time we reached Jake’s Farm, everyone was talking about the events of the era. Then the unheard of happened. My mother and aunt cracked open a beer! Stating "hey it’s a new millennia". Well this set the tone and even though there was actually very little drinking, the party began. Besides, it’s difficult not to have fun at Uncle Jake’s farm because there is always so much to do. Hats off to the organizers for a job well done.

Now let’s take you back to last Christmas. I left you hanging on 6 Dec 99. This was the year of OPERATION ABACUS (Y2K response) a non-event however, the Grinch stole Christmas for many of us in the military. Cathy was particularly busy leading up to New Years Day. Fortunately nothing came of the big computer millennia bug other than make a few computer contractors rich. The weather last Christmas was rather grand and we almost made it to New Years day and golfing on the 1st of the new millennia. The temperature reached in the high teens, good enough for shorts and BBQ just after Christmas. The weather however turned cool on New Year’s Eve. After Christmas the kids maintained their strong pace with their schoolwork both achieving merit and honors standing in virtually all subjects. I was on yet another helicopter trip, this time in the Ghost River wilderness area near Banff National Park west of Calgary. This trip was actually not that long. We were checking out the new Cadet Camp to see what exercises we could do in the off season when the cadets are not there. Best of all I was able to get some great pictures, as it is always fun to fly in a helicopter through the mountains.

Bryn received his driver’s license in the spring, which of course has brought its own set of terrors. Cathy has a hard enough time with me driving by myself. Bryn driving solo has caused grave concern. Bryn does not help matters much when he comes home from school and states, hi mom guess what kind of accident one of my friends was in. Our insurance company welcomed Bryn to the roads by forcing one of our vehicles off the road lest we pay a small fortune. The insurance company naturally assumes three vehicles, three drivers and therefore they all must be full-time drivers. Our total combined house and three vehicles insurance was less than it costs just to have Bryn as a full time driver on my insurance. I asked what would it cost if we gave Bryn a vehicle and he paid his own insurance.  Our agent said you don’t even want to go there. The result is I had to take the camper off the road.

In August I was able to snatch Cathy away from the virtual world and we went to the coast diving. We spent the weekend visiting with my mom and dad, Mikkie and Cory then traveled to Nanaimo on the Monday. I had called ahead to Luke and Tracy so we could stay over and said we would have a couple of friends. As it turned out we had lots of friends staying at Luke and Tracy’s. Luke was away on a course so it ended up being just Tracy at home and the 10 people I brought over for the night. We managed to find a space for everyone and we were all grateful for Tracy’s hospitality. The next day we went to breakfast with Uncle Phil and Mark and then headed up island to Port Hardy. At Port Hardy we took the charter boat to Hurst Island. It is a small Island off the North Coast of Vancouver Island and it is one of the world’s top diving destinations. Gerry, a friend of ours from Edmonton, organized the charter and it was a good group of people. On this particular venture we had left Bryn at home because he had school starting that week and Brett went and stayed with Dadye. The diving was excellent. I let Cathy lead most dives as it allowed me to take pictures. One of the most interesting underwater animals is the Wolf Eel, which looks like an old man. We saw this particular eel at the wreck of the Themis. This is one of my favorite dives. The Themis, an ore cargo ship, went down in the early 1900s after its Capt had run aground a couple of times but was able to get back to port on previous journeys. This time he was not so lucky although all the crew were saved.

I changed positions yet again in Edmonton. I still do pretty much the same thing in coordinating the logistics for the army in Western Canada just with a different unit. It should however, give me another three years in Edmonton. Bryn started grade 11 this year and Brett grade 7. Both of them are doing very well in school and Bryn is attempting to win some scholarship awards. They are also both refereeing hockey. Brett loves the idea of making some money. Bryn has also applied to the army reserve, which will secure him a summer job. Cathy continues to work as hard as ever. You may wonder what exactly Cathy does. To use an example when you pickup the telephone you expect to hear a dial tone and when you press the correct sequence of numbers you expect to be talking to the correct person or their answering machine on the other end. Speaking of answering machines do you recall the first few times you had to leave a message and at how much of a struggle it was to get the words out? Nowadays sometimes when you call someone and they actually pickup the phone you think to yourself – darn now I have to talk to this person for the next hour when all I wanted to do was leave a message. Back to what Cathy does – she is a cat herder. I am not sure if you ever saw that commercial where they are herding cats but it is funny and a good analogy. She enables the computers to talk to one another through all the various switches, hubs, routers and servers. Sounds technical and it is. This of course brings us back to the beginning because without people like Cathy we would be back to Canada Post and dealing with snail mail and bankers hours.

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