Ardell and I are really looking forward to Spring coming ---- maybe next year. I had to scrape my windshield yesterday morning to go to work -- it was so caked with frost. I planted my flowers in the flower beds last Saturday and I don't know now if they will survive this winter weather we are having. Like I say, we might get Spring in 2010, if we are lucky.

Ardell and I enjoyed the summer weather in Australia for the month of March. We visited our friends in Wagga Wagga, but really didn't do all that much for the month. It was nice to just relax in the back yard at Brian's house. We went to the beach at Batesmans' Bay, but the cabins we rented were so run down, we only stayed for two nights and left again. I didn't feel that $900.00 per week was justified for what we had. The website showed the new pictures on it of all the cabins, but they must have been 20 years ago. They were actually mobile homes, I am not suppose to call them trailers, but they were so old and the bed was as hard as my kitchen table. I like a hard bed but that was a little much. It was like sleeping on the box spring instead of a mattress. Annette wasn't very accomodating with us either. We asked them to go out for dinner with us for our Anniversary, that was what we went to Australia for, was our honeymoon and to celebrate our 1st anniversary on March 15th, but she refused to go out for dinner. I told her not to worry, we were taking them out and we were paying, thinking they couldn't afford to go out, but she still refused. So Ardell wanted to go to Melbourne to see a girl he used to work with in Calgary in the Engineering field, so we hopped on the Greyhound Bus, booked a hotel in Melbourne and went to Melbourne the night before our Anniversary. I didn't want to drive because they drive on the left hand side of the road. I would have had an accident the first five minutes on the road, I am sure. I guess Annette didn't like that, because after that time, she was cold shoulder to us. She would take off in the one and only car for the whole day and go where she wanted to go, and didn't take us anywhere after that weekend. I wished we could have changed our tickets home and left, but we endured it till the end. She finally took me to a Target store, but if she went shopping she would ride her bike to town, just so I couldn't go with her. She had taken me swimming with her a couple of time until the last two weeks, she would even ride her bike to town to do that. Hey it didn't take me long to catch on to her shanningans. Ardell says now he is sorry he told Brian to marry her. She is a strange person. I will tell you more when we are in person, but the welcome was worn out at their house. I will never go back.

Now when we went to Melbourne, Kathleen was about our same age, and she was a wonderful person who couldn't do enough for us. She met us at the Greyhound station, which was across the city for her to come and pick us up, she took us to our hotel, came and met us for breakfast the next morning, did research for a restaurant to go out for dinner the next night. She drove us all around on Sunday morning and went to the Victoria Market, took a tram tour of the downtown city, took us out for dinner that night, took us back to the hotel, and retrieved us the next morning to take us to the Greyhound bus again. Just was a darling with us. We had so much fun with her, wished we could have spent more time with her. She is coming home to Canada in July to take her daughter back to Melbourne with her, and plans on buying a winery with her daughter and live there for good. June 5th she will be an Australian citizen. She is such a sweetheart. We hope to see her when she returns to Calgary this summer.

We were very glad to get home to Calgary and back to work, although I really didn't miss work.
I may just plan to retire sooner than planned.

Ok today Ardell and I changed our email addresses and went to Shaw for our emails. Our new addresses are wilsonae@shaw.ca and wilsonsl48@shaw.ca. Make note of them in your email address lists.

We hope to see all the family at the 50th anniversary for Marvelle and Clifford. We look forward to seeing Nickee and Brad and all the Noble and Hyde families.

See you soon.

Love
Shirley