Last Saturday was our annual Ing family reunion. The Ing family are very "Inglish" with roots going back to Buckinghamshire, England. My grandfather and his older brother James came to Canada in the late 1800s. Their mother, sister Ada, and brother Thomas came to Canada in the early 1900s, shortly after the death of their father Thomas George Ing.

I am trying to drum up support for a 2010 Ing Family book, as this will mark 25 years since the previous one.

Besides visiting, genealogy, and playing cards, horse shoe pitching is always a part of our reunion. My uncle Evans, although he is in his 80s is a champion player, and competed recently in the Alberta Senior's games. Some of the other members of the family are quite good too. I, on the other hand am not. Laurel was my partner, but she handled the handicap well. We were eliminated in the first round, but were not totally skunked!

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The weather was nice for most of the day and then a strong wind storm developed. Did that deter our horse shoe pitchers? Not in the least, as you will see in the photo! This wind storm did severe damage in some areas. At the Big Valley Jamboree a woman was killed and 15 more spectators were injured when a stage and bleachers collapsed. A mile from my house, vehicles received expensive hail damage. In various places the wind damaged buildings and trees. We were fortunate.

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My big project (well, one of them) for the summer was replacing my 32-year old furnace. Judy and I removed the old one from the house with the help of a winch and our car's bumper hitch. Chris helped me haul the new furnace home and put it in place. Then over the past two weeks I have been hooking everything up again. The biggest job was building an adapter to hook the new furnace to the old plenum, but the second version of the plenum adapter did the job. I tested the furnace on Friday and it is working fine! Bring on the winter! No!!! I take that back. We haven't really had summer this year, so let's bring on the summer and autumn first! A few days ago the weather man said that although we are in mid-summer and Australia is in mid-winter, the forecast high temperature was identical for Edmonton and Sidney.

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It is always a pleasure to get emails and phone calls about family history. This morning I had a call from someone researching a line connected to the family of Andrew Buchanan and Mary Jane Booth. It was a delightful conversation that helped both of us.