My efforts at filling you in have been interrupted somewhat. We made an unexpected and very quick trip back to Melbourne on September 7 as Craig's mum had passed away. We received the news on Saturday evening after returning from a football game and after hastily arranging flights we left Denver on the Sunday and arrived in Melbourne Tuesday morning. It all happened so quickly it felt a little surreal and after staying in Melbourne 3 nights we left for Canberra to drop in and see friends and of course, the dogs.

After having some time to think we decided to break up the trip home and we had a 2 night stopover in LA. After paying for the tickets back home we decided we wouldn’t realise our plans to travel to Disneyworld in Florida next year so by stopping in LA we could at least take the kids to Disneyland instead. It helped to break up a very long trip and it also helped to raise everyone's spirits before getting back to Denver on Tuesday. We also had to get back home because we were expecting visitors on Thursday. Geoff, Esther, Erica and Alison were coming from Melbourne to stay with us for 11 days. You could say life has been a bit hectic recently. Geoff and his family left for Germany on Monday and today being Sunday our lives seem to be returning to the point where we left off at the end of August.

Amy has settled in back at school and Craig is busy at work (most unusual). We went for a bike ride this morning (it was only 34F, but sunny) up at Walker Ranch which is at an elevation of 8,000ft. It certainly got the heart rate up and it felt great to be out doing something again.

I have missed out on telling you about our wonderful trip to Michigan to visit Liz and Mark, and our diversion home through Kentucky to visit Ken and Lynne but I need a bit more time to document that trip. Hopefully over the next few weeks things will be quiet and I can catch up.

I need to amend my opening line to say what happened to July, August and September but if I think about it long enough I can remember so I hope to fill you in soon. Anyway we had a first snowfall for the season on Tuesday, the day after our visitors left. The days are in the 50s and overnight it is around 32F so the ski season isn't far away. (If I stay here much longer I will definitely stop converting to celsius).