Good Friday, April 6 - We meet niece Stacy & Dallas at Houston's Pizza for lunch. Stacy is expecting in July, so she is looking plump & very healthy & Dallas is excited about having a little brother! The food is mostly very good & we hear all the news with the newlyweds! Back to Ryan's to do some cleaning in the RV, time to get it road ready for the final leg of our trip. It is stored in a big equipment garage, as the water had frozen up earlier in the week, so it is nice & warm here & cozy for sleeping, no need for furnace heat. Off to Wade & Donna's for dinner of ribs, spinach salad & crispy potatoes, delish! We pull out pictures & go thru some more of Mom's, little by little we will get them organized.

Sat. April 7 - I am up & over to Penny's to color Easter eggs with Alexis & Trista, their Grandma Lynne is there also. We do some with boiled onion skins for color & twigs & pine needles for design, natural style. And of course there are lots of bright colored ones too! Such busy little girls.... After lunch it is time to press our clothes and get ready for the party tonight. At 5 we arrive at the Heritage Inn for cocktails. Beautiful hall & the Nagel kids are all there. Brian & Dennis & wives Jillian & Annabelle that we have not met & Ruth & her ex, Peter whom we have not seen for years, maybe since Yellowknife days. The 140 people here are celebrating the 90th birthday of Martin & Martin & Bernie's 56th wedding anniversary (they were our next door neighbors on the farm & have remained lifelong great friends). The dinner is scrumptious, roast beef, chicken & lots of hot veggies & salads, along with great Alberta wine Ruth imported! We are sitting with us 6 & Uncle Lawrence & Gladys, so good to see them again! Brian is the MC & he does a bang-up job, being witty & touching at the same time. The 8 grandchildren & "adopted" grandchildren all make presentations or speeches, right from age 6 to 20 or so. Very moving, they all do a great job. Then the dancing started, with a polka band, from 8 till 12. What a hoot, everyone danced lots, all the old time dances. I took 90 plus pictures, so you should see a few soon! It was a great time & Gerry went to the mic & made us all more teary by saying that Clarence & Emily would have loved to be there & were with us in spirit. All in all it was the party of the year & we were very happy to be there!

Easter Sunday, April 8 - the final pack up of the RV, and then off to brunch at Nick's Place with the bro's & families. Thanks Ryan! From here we drove to the farm at Crane Valley to spend the afternoon with Uncle Lawrence & Gladys. The plan was to take out a metal sign we had designed, with "Gibson Homestead" on it, but it was not completed. Too cold to climb Clay Butte today, took out pictures to look at. Great to visit here again. We also had a look at the diaries that Grandma Gibson wrote about the happenings on the farm between 1925 & 1960 or so. Some restortation needs to be determined for some of them. Fun & lots of history to read there! Once back in MJ we say our goodbyes and head down the road to get a few hours of driving in before dark & a head start on our 1st leg to Kenora. We cross the border into Manitoba just around 7 pm & park at a Rest Area for the night. Pull out our barbecued chicken & coleslaw from the grocery store for an easy dinner. It feels odd to be on the road alone again, but we are now looking forward to getting back to our little cottage on the ocean & to seeing our kids again!! We hear there is a big snow storm that hit the maritimes on the weekend, so it may not dry up on our road in time for us to drive up there....we could be living in the motorhome longer yet. Maybe we should be heading south for another few weeks, instead!