Last night we went to the pre-school Halloween party. Miss Amy didn't want to be a pumpkin or a witch, she just wanted to be a fairy princess. It was good fun with lots of games for the kids and prizes. Amy seemed to have a great time and made some more friends. The person that I happened to talk to was, yep you guessed it, from Australia. I couldn't believe it. She is from Cairns and married an American she met whilst in China. She has a two year old (he is bigger than 4 year old Amy) and a 5 week old baby. It was great to chat to someone in a similar situation, she has only been in Colorado a couple of months.

Well the weather has turned this weekend and they are predicting snow. The mountains have received a big dumping of snow, but none here locally as yet. Everyone says it always turns bad on the Halloween weekend.

We have planned our 4 day thanksgiving weekend, we are heading down south to Buena Vista and Pueblo. The Great Sand Dune Monument is down there, supposed to be good to see. We are staying in a B&B which when I thought of the idea I didn't really consider what staying in a B&B would be like with Amy and Kyle. Oh well they didn't say no we don't allow children so we'll see how it goes. We will head down there the last weekend in November.

We have been in our house for one week now and we are still deciding whether or not to get cable TV. I don't think we'll bother, without it you still get six stations, which is more than enough. The house we are renting came with all the white goods which was such a saving, it included a fridge/freezer, a washer, dryer and dishwasher. The only thing we are going to buy is a microwave. The good things about being in the house - the extra room, being able to shut the laundry door, having a fridge that makes crushed ice and that is big enough to hold a 1.75lt bottle of margarita mix (that one is from Craig); the bad things - the extra housework (we have 3 1/2 bathrooms, the 1/2 being the toilet and sink on the middle level). We also have a gas log fireplace, it is such a giggle. You turn it on with a flick of a switch and up come these flames around these manufactured logs, complete with red glowing coals under the logs, and all of this is behind glass. We haven't really used it yet except to see what it looks like. The house has central heating that is controlled by a thermostat, so I don't have to do anything (I think I am becoming lazy). The furnace (I call it the heater) is down in the basement.

As yet we don't have the ability to make long distance calls. There is a local service provider but in order to make a long distance call (within the States and O/S), you have to nominate a long distance provider and in order to do that we need to provide a hefty deposit because we don't have a credit history here in the States. Anyway I decided to ring Telstra before we left our apartment last week and asked them to provide us a letter stating that we were a good paying customer. Hopefully this will be sufficient for them to waive the deposit. It is so hard to get anything done here without a credit history and there seems to be an inability to go outside of the US to find information. Even our bank here, who we are getting Visa cards from, rejected us saying sorry but you don't have a credit history. Craig went back to them and said we told you that when we opened the account, you need to check it out in Australia. Oh they said. We still don't have a Visa card.

I hope all is going well for the Burra fair and that the weather does the right thing. We went out for dinner on Halloween night and with the time difference it meant that the fair would have been up and running while we were eating so we there thinking of everyone back home.

Thanks to everyone that responded to my last email. It was great to hear news from home. I hope to have a modem soon so that I can respond to emails a bit faster. At the moment I have to transfer my mail to disk so Craig can then send them from work. We have been waiting for Craig's pay to arrive so that we can go and buy some things we need. Last we heard the cheque was in the mail, ha ha ha.

Other little differences (the things that make this country interesting):

Americans vote this coming Tuesday, the papers are saying that if they get 38% to turn out and vote it will be excellent. They actually have to vote for individual positions, like who will be the attorney general, treasurer, county sheriff, etc; as well they vote on about 20 amendments such as should these millions of dollars be allocated to education to hire more teachers, should Colorado's water to be sold to other states, should Broomfield become another county; no wonder people are reluctant to go and vote.

Paul Hogan still does commercials over here, radio and TV.

Miss Amy's pre-school teacher asked me if we speak English in Australia (she had asked Amy to put something in the trash, and Amy translated it and said to her teacher 'you mean the rubbish bin').

Some amazing advertisements in the newspaper - become an egg donor and you can earn $3,000; also they advertise children up for adoption, complete with photos.

1.5 billion dollars was spent on Halloween costumes across the country this year. We contributed $9.99 to this total.

Colorado's state animal is the Rocky Mountain Bighorn Sheep, we haven't seen one as yet.