January is Meghan's month of birth and she is rapidly approaching sixteen. The New Year will see us into a whole new phase of parenting called driver education. We are quaking in our boots. Meghan is in grade 10 and continues to excel at school. She gets involved in every theatrical opportunity that comes her way. Last summer the Deep River Musical Society put on "Evita". Recently she was involved in the high school musical production of "My Fair Lady". Meghan's very big news is that she has been accepted to participate in a Rotary Student Exchange for the next school year. She will spend ten months living and attending school in another country. Her top three choices are Japan, Russia and Ecuador. We hope to hear where she will be place by the end of December so we can get to work on Visa requirements and she can start learning some language basics such as "what happened to my luggage?" Meghan led us into new territory earlier in the year when she landed a 'real' job working at our local Curves fitness club, so she can save her pennies for next year's grand adventure.

***News flash: We've just found out that Meghan will be going to Russia

February is Lauren's month of birth. She will soon be turning 13. Our last official teenager, although being the youngest in the pack, she's pretty much already there. She was really pleased to move into what is left of our middle school (now grades 7 & 8 nested in one cozy hallway of our high school) and has taken locker decor to new heights. It turns out to be a bit like interior decorating. Like her sister, she gets involved in anything theatrical that goes by. Earlier in the year, before "Evita" rehearsals were seriously underway, she combined her love of showmanship with her love of cooking and filmed a couple of episodes of her show "Cooking with the Toad".

March & April passed uneventfully enough. Which doesn't mean they weren't busy, just not a lot to report! Lauren's Youth Theatre Group put on a very funny production called "Fifteen Reasons not to be in a Play" and Meghan's high school theatre arts company went to the Sears Drama Festival with a couple of plays. Meghan won an Award of Merit for her performance in "Why Do We Laugh".

May brings David's birthday. He's 15 going on 16 wishing he was 26. He's VERY keen to get his driver's license and when we point out that he's not likely to get driver's ed. until the fall (given the late-spring time of this birthday) he argues that they'll probably let him in because he'll be almost 16. We're not sure the law works that way, however I guess we'll find out in the spring. David graduated from grade eight last year, a big event in Ontario. This year brings his first year of high school, which he enjoys very much, except for the work. He's also involved in "My Fair Lady", first doing lighting, and then recruited to dance in the chorus due to a chronic shortage of boys in theatre. In practice with Meghan, he did a lift, tossing her and neglecting to catch her. He's threatening to do that on stage on closing night. He achieved his blue belt in karate last spring and hopes to get his first of two brown belt levels next spring.

May also brought the first anniversary of the loss of Annabel, Leslie's mother. We marked the event by interring her in our family plot in the Deep River cemetery. Up til then, her urn was placed next to the fireplace she enjoyed so much, in the home she and Hugh built together. We discovered something interesting as Hugh designed a central monument for our family plot, and that is that family plots don't exist the way that they used to. Leslie's family has a couple of churchyards where one can go and trace back several generations, however Deep River's cemetery regulations didn't allow for anything more than a double monument for a married couple. Fortunately the Mayor and others readily recognized the hole in the regulations, and rewrote sections of the by-law to allow us to proceed with our project. We hope to have our family monument in place by the end of the year.

June brings Leslie's birthday, age unimportant, variable if you are only as old as you feel! Leslie joined the Valley Artisans Co-op in Deep River in the spring and has been enjoying her quilting tremendously. She made the mistake of demonstrating her technical prowess by typing on her portable Palm keyboard at a Co-op meeting and found herself webmaster. She is also called on to sew flags and banners for them, but feels that these contributions are far preferable to being secretary, or heaven-forbid, president! She continues with La Leche League, supporting breastfeeding mothers, in her spare time (?!) and does pretty much everything else associated with managing a very busy household full of teens. Leslie keeps wondering when she will reach the plateau, as it always seems that it can't get any busier...and yet it does.

July. Summer holidays. Alarm clocks off!! July is the month we celebrate Biniyam's birthday. He turned fifteen this year. Biniyam flew out to Prince Albert, Saskatchewan on July 2 to help his grandfather Hugh (Leslie's dad) with the family cottage on Lac La Ronge. They spent quite a bit of time in P.A. with Leslie's sister Andrea where Biniyam enjoyed golfing and playing World of Warcraft with his Aunt. Although he is a newbie golfer, he repeatedly tied and even beat his Aunt at the game. This fall Biniyam started grade eight in Deep River but struggled with family life. We decided it would be better for all for Biniyam to return to P.A. in mid-November to complete grade eight and swim with the Prince Albert Sharks Club. A big change for Biniyam, and while we miss him here at home, he seems to be thriving in Saskatchewan.

August the rest of the family joined Biniyam in Saskatchewan and spent most of the month at the family cottage on Lac La Ronge, sadly for the last time. We've been travelling there almost every summer for the last thirty-four years, but with the loss of Leslie's mother, Annabel, her father's heart was no longer in it. The cottage was sold to landscape artist, Greg Hardy, who has a young family and will, we hope, love it the way that we did. Perhaps we'll start to see our island, or familiar views from it, appearing in his paintings.

September. Back to school. This has always been the 'real' New Year for us. We no longer have anyone in our primary school which feels a little weird. Lauren & Biniyam started grades seven and eight at our middle school, located in a wing of our high school. Meghan & David started grades nine and ten in our high school. Biniyam has since moved to Princess Margaret School (PMS) in Prince Albert. School photos are getting increasingly professional and interesting. Unfortunately, Biniyam managed to miss getting his taken and Meghan's & David's haven't come back yet. Fortunately, Lauren waited until after picture day to dye her hair bright pink.

October. Thanksgiving. We enjoyed a trip down to St. Catherine's to celebrate a couple of family birthdays. It was great to spend extended family time that was not associated with a funeral. The weather was very warm and we enjoyed a trip to Niagara Falls with the girls while the boys went paint-balling. Halloween. The girls LOVE to dress-up. The guys will put on minimal costumery to bag some candy. Lauren had a particularly funny costume this year. She was the damsel in distress tied to the railroad track, who became impatient waiting for rescue and picked herself up.

November. My Fair Lady completed its three night run. David danced and sang and worked back stage. Meghan danced and sang and performed a cameo role. We went on opening night and thought it was the best high school production we'd seen (even someone without a kid in the show said that)! With MFL ending, both girls will be chasing parts in an upcoming town musical, "The Good, the Bad & the Nerdy". Locally written and produced, it is part three in a comedy series which follows the history of the Deep River area from the time that Ottawa parachuted a whole whack of nuclear scientists into the backwoods to start AECL after WWII. These plays wouldn't mean a whole lot to anyone not associated with the area, but they are rolling on the floor funny for the rest of us.

December. Here we are at the closing of another year with Andrew's birthday tucked in just before the end. This year he's celebrating his fiftieth. We are pleased that his family will be joining us to celebrate his birthday and spend Christmas with us. Andrew continues his challenging and rewarding career at AECL, where he is part of the leadership team for the Research and Technology Division, as General Manager of Programs and Nuclear Oversight (that's a mouthful). Andrew has recently passed his 25th anniversary with the company. This year also saw Andrew pass a similar anniversary with Scouting, and with the kids having moved on to other activities, he decided it was time to hang up his hiking boots. Outside of work, Andrew keeps busy with various sports - biking, X-country skiing, curling - and trying to stay on top of the never-ending stream of fix-it projects around the house.

As the year draws to a close, we hope that you enjoy a lovely holiday season complete with generous measures of peace and joy, and that 2008 is a year of health, happiness and all things good. Stay in touch!