Merry Christmas of 2010! It has been a good year for our family.

My wonderful 30 month FamilySearch mission ended in January. I am now serving in the Edmonton Alberta Riverbend Family History Centre, where I have been teaching classes on Thursday evenings. There has been progress in our own family history research, as well as assistance given to others.
In January we replaced the scruffy carpeting in my office with laminate flooring. (Reminder to self: paint the new plaster twice before repainting the wall. It does a better job and it is half the work!)

We hired a company to remove four large trees that threatened our power line. (It is always good to bring in the experts for the big jobs, right?) On April 23 we arrived home to find that this company had destroyed the power line by dropping a tree on it. They also destroyed our plum tree by dropping a tree on it, narrowly missing the house! We were without electricity, furnace, and running water for 2-1/2 days. Needless to say, we were not impressed! A friend loaned us a small generator, which kept the food in the freezer frozen. We are thankful for family and friends!

We had fun with the family at birthdays and major holidays. The grandchildren are growing so fast! A year ago the youngest was a baby. Now he is one of the kids.

I helped my son Andrew to install a suspended ceiling in his family room in February. Then in November, I helped him to install laminate in the family room. It is looking really good. At home we tore out the old carpet from our living room-dining room area and installed laminate. The old carpet had to be torn up in strips and the underlay removed with a scraper. We got the missionaries to move our piano onto the new flooring. (I know you won't be reading my blog, but thanks, you are wonderful!)

Evelyn received her Bachelor of Education degree with distinction from the University of Alberta, and has her first job teaching kindergarten. James is pursuing his Certified Management Accountant designation. James and Karen went to the UK in October with friends, visiting England and Scotland. Rob went to New Orleans and Mexico on vacation. Judy and I went to southern Alberta and BC, visiting Judy’s brother Bob and my brother Reg. This was our only “trip”, but somehow our new Corolla has over 40,000 km.

On the 19th of June, four of the granddaughters were in a dance recital at the Jubilee Auditorium. In June one was in her school play, so we have some young performers in the family.

We had strange weather, with a hot April and a snowy May. We had to cover the tomato plants every night for the longest time! We still had a fairly good garden, although the deer ate up the peas. We also bought an additional apple tree, a Norkent. We bought strawberry plants and they did well. We had a good harvest from our Heyer-12 apple tree. These apples are thin skinned and about 2 to 2-1/2 inches in diameter. Peeling them removes most of the flesh of the apple, so instead we split them, cored them, and sliced them in the food processor for pie filling. It worked OK. We enjoy our flowers and all of the greenery around.

I wrote a personal history by topics, and have just finished my Buchanan Family Tree 2010 e-book, but my books on the Ing and Lidgett families remain unfinished. Judy wrote a Buchanan Family Recipes cookbook, as part of the Personal Progress goals she is working on. Both of us have done some indexing for FamilySearch.org. Rob has written a fantasy novel, which Judy and I enjoyed reading this year.

I am also learning to create DVD movies of the family. I am using Windows (Vista) Movie Maker to assemble the movies and the free Sothink Movie DVD Maker to create DVDs that will play in a home DVD player. Sothink Movie DVD Maker supports the title screens created by Windows Movie Maker, and creates a menu that allows you to select the movie you want to play with the TV remote control. So it is a good combination. I am putting together video clips I have taken over the last 4 years, also an interview with my mother and her sister, a walk-through of the family home, and clips of me telling old family stories. My camera is a Canon PowerShot A200IS (whatever that means!). It is a digital camera that can take videos with sound.
Our health continues to allow us to do the things we want to do. We are truly grateful.

We treasure the ancient message of hope and reassurance. “… God sent not his Son into the world to condemn the world; but that the world through him might be saved.” (John 3:17)

May God bless you all at Christmas and throughout the coming year!