Dear Friends and Family

2004 has been another busy year for the Rye family and Christmas seems to have come sooner than ever. It was a better year for skiing, and we all went downhill skiing at Table Mountain and at Wapiti. Both of these are longer hills in Saskatchewan than the one in Prince Albert. It was a much better year for cross country skiing too and John and Christine enjoyed the local trails. In June, we had a very special camping weekend with the DeGurse and Edge families, who were part of our Bible study group fifteen years ago. It was wonderful to see our offspring of all ages just having fun together.

Work continues to change gradually for us both. Christine's work activities have not changed since last year although she will be sitting the national Palliative Care exam in April. John has done no emergency work since the arrival of emergency doctors, either at the hospital or at the walk in clinic this year. The office has been busier, assisting mostly with major orthopedics including new hip resurfacing and partial knee replacements. John has continued to do palliative care and car insurance assessments, and did a basic pharmacology by extension internet course from the university. In Church, we have continued to be a part of St. George's, looking after the primary school age class. John has preached three times during the year and was part of the Anglican Essentials conference in Ottawa in September. We have been part of PA nature and taken part in two bird counts. John has been part of Transport 2000 and the local railway historical society and cleaned a railway carriage.

This year Michael graduated from St. Mary's High school and did sufficiently well to gain entry to the University of Saskatchewan to do commerce, with English drama and classical history as his optional subjects. Michael and Peter played the guitar in our local auditorium in a Concert for Peace, and he has also played both in rez and at church since going to university. The High School drama this year was Les Miserables and Michael worked as a stage hand. After the success of his singing at the concert for peace he was told he should have taken a musical part in the play. He has been involved in inter-residence Canadian football this term, and has discovered the joys of the climbing wall.

Peter continues in St. Mary High school where he has been doing well . He has been involved with Track-indoors and out- and placed third in the province in 110metre hurdles. The reconstruction of the school has included a two lane indoor track. His France trip in May was preceded by an intense round of organizing and fund raising both by him and by us. Peter seemed to have a great time to judge by the photos of Lourdes, Carcassonne, Nice and Paris. He was on his school team for Law day, where they had to prepare both sides of a case and compete against other high schools in the province. Peter and Michael had a summer job erecting special event tents which took them all across the Northern half of the province, including the Saskatoon airshow and Mozart on the mountain. Peter has started volunteering in the Victoria hospital on Friday evenings and has been accompanying on the guitar at church.

Deborah changed schools this year from Holy Cross to Rivier Academy which is an all-girls school with a green plaid kilt as a part of the uniform. She has continued to take lessons in Tap, Ballet and Jazz with performances in festivals in Biggar and Prince Albert. Violin lessons continued and now she is in her school strings program .She is learning how to play the flute in school music lessons and is working really hard at this. She continues in French Immersion and attended a weekend Rendez-Vous in Regina where the aim was to have the children participate in a totally French environment. She also successfully took her Baby sitting course.

Ted and Hazel both continue to be fit and healthy and very active in driving the children to their various weekly activities and in assisting their homework. A particular joy for our teens has been golfing with them .Christine's Dad was married to Anthea in March in Tewkesbury Abbey. We look forward to seeing them next year in Canada.

This year we traveled down to California by car, camping on most nights but staying in hotels one night in each direction and two nights in Las Vegas. Peter and Michael did the lion's share of the driving which was wonderful for John and Christine as it gave us some much needed rest. There were a few hairy moments when we were city driving but on the whole they did really well and found it to be a positive experience. We traveled the Interstates, Golden Gate Bridge, the streets of San Francisco that our teens have driven so often on the computer in "Midtown Madness" and parts of the Pacific Coastal Highway and Highway 66. Almost everywhere, the road surface was considerably better than we are accustomed to in Saskatchewan. From our home in Saskatchewan we traveled south past Grasslands National Park and the Missouri gap to Carson City and Lake Tahoe. We then went to San Francisco for July4th, traveling along the coast road to Monterry and Malibu. Coming home from Los Angeles, we came through Death Valley, Las Vegas, Grand Canyon, the Arizona desert and Moab.

Lake Tahoe was a one hour picnic stop on the road. Wow, it is beautiful, and we are definitely going back. We couldn't believe the size of the squirrels on the beach, they were the size of spaniels. Our teens voted to have an early lunch on the beach so they could have a swim.

San Francisco was an enjoyable city to be in. Last time we stayed by the Pacific Coast, but ocean side wasn't an option for the July 4th. weekend, so this time we stayed bayside. The tourist area at Fisherman's wharf is at the northern extremity of the city. We took a day trip to Alcatraz where they filmed The Rock so anyone who has seen the film will be able to picture it. The bird life is prolific so John and Christine were able to enjoy the sight of night herons, cormorants and baby seagulls. It doesn't seem possible that they are as big as their parents at 3 weeks but not yet able to fly. Al Capone was one famous inmate on this island. San Francisco has cable cars, a great treat for all of us. Our teens enjoyed hanging off the side as we raced down the hills. The brakes on our van started to play up on these hills and had to be replaced a few days later. Pier 39 was a good place to eat fish and chips, we also saw wild sea-lions. July 4th means fireworks. From our campsite we enjoyed displays around the whole bay from 3pm to 11pm. At the end there was an enormous black cloud of smoke hanging over us.

The Nevada State Railway Museum in Carson City is one of the best examples of cooperation between state and volunteers that we have seen. It is focused on the trains of the old west, and yes several of the engines are film stars. We rode the interurban to the pumpkin patch at the Western Railway Museum, enjoyed the incomparable transit of San Francisco, the streetcars old and new of Los Angeles, the propane buses and trailers of the Grand Canyon and were one day too early to ride the new monorail of Las Vegas( which has since shut down). The Last Spike was interesting but disappointing, not least because there wasn't one.

Los Angeles is a big city. We camped by the beach in Malibu which is on the North West corner of the city. There was nowhere that we went that was not accessible by car. To reach Long Beach at the south end of the city took us over two hours outside rush hours, and would have taken three by transit, Los Angeles is large-in English terms, around the bay from Santa Barbara to San Pedro is the same distance as Eastbourne to Bournemouth. The tar pits are unique, and made ice age animals come to life for us. It was amazing that this was in the heart of the city, and not in remote wilderness. Hollywood really needs an extreme makeover, including the walk of fame. We bought a map and went to see the outsides of the homes of the stars. This we would recommend. I have never seen such a massive or busy container port as at Terminal Island, Long Beach and we were surprised to find that even in the poorer areas of town most people lived in houses with gardens. The water was only 67C, but we enjoyed our time by the sea. We didn't enjoy Long Beach as much; the beach scenes you see in films are from Santa Monica and Santa Barbara.

Death Valley was very hot. It's below sea level and was 54C. We were very glad we had air conditioning in the car. There were a group of athletes running an extreme marathon. Each had a back up vehicle with people handing them water every few hundred metres. We wound the window down to yell "Go Canada" as we passed the lone Canadian contestant. We had to eat our picnic in the van as there was nowhere set aside inside the park hut.

Las Vegas is best known for the strip, which is to the South of the old and modern city centres. It is correctly known for legal gambling and sex, and as a family without interest in either in their commercial forms we weren't sure that we would find much to do. Our first experience of a free show- basically, several East Europeans doing acrobatics on a stage surrounded by working slots while the family guys watched from the mezzanine- was poor, and we had several tacky moments at other times during the day. But there were enough great moments to make it worth it- the buffet at Excalibur, the pirate show at Treasure Island, the reconstructed streets at the Venetian, Caesar's Palace and the Pyramid. Las Vegas is desert, and there is accommodation for every budget. While you could camp on the strip in the KOA, why would you?

Grand Canyon national park was a two night camp stop for us. We started with a ranger talk on the California condor which has been brought back from near extinction in 1992 with only 9 birds left in the wild. Scientists made the decision to capture them. They usually lay one egg a year and if the chick survives they do not lay another egg until the 3rd year. By removing the eggs they were able to get the condors to lay a second egg, and sometimes a third which were hand reared by condor puppets so they would not relate to man. While our ranger was speaking, a pair of condors flew overhead. They have a wingspan of 3m. They have released 150 condors back into the wild and are very proud of the first fledgling to be born in the wild last year, which is the only condor without a number on its wings. We hiked 2km down the canyon only 1/7 of the total distance. They don't let you go all the way down and back in a day. The temperature rises as you descend into the canyon so it was hot work. We loved seeing the lizards and cacti along the way.

Further up the Colorado River, at Moab, we spent a day on a raft trip. There were 40 people in our group so people took it in turns riding on the raft, the row boat and the inflatable "duckies" a kind of two seater canoe. Christine was the only one to fall out of the raft as we hit an eddy. She was only in the water about half a minute but it was a bit hairy for a few seconds. The rocks are bright orange in the early morning sun. There were hundreds of Great blue herons and Egrets. John remembers the vultures in the trees.

With our children all being teens, there were several mornings when Christine and I were able to leave them around dawn and explore the local wildlife. our customs agent encouraged us to see the wildfowl refuge at Malta, we marveled at the beauty of Lake Tahoe, the Grand Canyon and Arches National Park in Moab. We love to be by the coast, whether manicured and clean at Pebble Beach in Monterry, much loved and much used at Candlestick Park or stark and spectacular at Big Sur. The Great Salt Lake and Death valley give different meanings to the phrase hot and dry, and well words fail to describe the grandeur of Grand Canyon. Yet, for me, to see the soaring of the California Condor was the most moving of all; a great reminder that what is most awesome and massive lives, not only on carrion, but on people's choices.

May God bless your time this Christmas and in the New Year 2005.

John, Christine, Michael, Peter and Deborah