It's a beautiful fall day, sunny, and warm. Tim and I enjoyed the morning together at the Farmer's Market in Chico with a great cup of Java. Eli is off with his Uncle Jim fixing something that may or may not have been broken in the first place, and the girls are serving at an 80th birthday party for a friend.

Kathy and Wilbert are home from their Northern Saskatchewan adventure and they brought a trunk load of Tim Horton's coffee (praise God!) and Mom Smith (from Salem) for another visit before we leave. We have a busy week ahead of us as we are starting to pack up and get ready to hit the road again at the end of this week. Grandma of course, wants to see as many people as she can while she is here so there will be a lot of partying with family and friends before we go.

One of our highlights this week was having dinner with Tim's nephews and their families in the original Smith home that Tim grew up in. It was fun to actually walk the hallway that Tim has described to us over the years as enormously long and occasionally populated with boy eating monsters. Tim hasn't been in that home for 36 years, but it was like walking through time as he detailed stories from his childhood memories, showing us the big walnut tree he fell out of when someone shook it, describing the crack in the patio resulting from an earthquake, explaining how badly he got sunburnt falling asleep on the back step, and clarifying how grown-up he felt watching the sun set from his own little Boston Rocker on the front porch between his mom and dad. We even discovered a piece of original carpet far in the back closet. It was a wonderful trip we all got to take down memory lane.