Manatoulin Island on the north shores of Lake Huron. We visited for two days and had lovely weather the entire time. It was misty on Wed and windy on Thurs, but this morning was nice, warm and calm for a morning walk on the beach before we returned to Sudbury. We stayed in Providence Bay (pictured above). The RV park was nice and the people friendly. We were just across the street from the beach. We spent our days walking and swimming at the beach. Basically taking it easy. There was a nice playground at the far end of the beach that was a nice 1 km walk to. Yvonne met some kids and invited them for marshmellow roasting last night, so she was happy to have some company.

We had a great visit yesterday at Christina and Eric Kannen's. Yvonne had a great time with her cousins Natania and Kiersten. The girls had a great time swimming in the pool - of course, our little dolphin was happy. Christina put on a dinner fit for royalty and topped off the evening with gift bags for the girls. We were all happily spoiled.

Blues for Food was the event of the day in Sudbury. For the admission of some non-perishable food, there was music, kid activities, and food. We strolled about. Yvonne had her face painted and she tried to go on some bouncy rides. The kids were pretty wired up, so she got a bit pushed around and lasted about 1 minute on one ride and wouldn't go on any others. We ran into Brian Orser (pictured above with Jim) - no, not the skater. We were so happy to run into Brian. We went to the beer gardens and hung out with him and Mary (pictured above with Yvonne) and Don for an hour or so. Yvonne had a great time sipping beer and dancing to the music. Just kidding, no beer. It was a fun day wrapped up with an evening on Mary and Don's deck enjoying the sun, some drinks and ordered-in Italian food. Note to Don: don't order Italian after a few drinks. We ended up with enough food to feed about 10. Hee hee, we had a great time!

We went to "The Big Nickel" on Tuesday, but forgot the camera. We drove back up today to capture some pictures. The view of Sudbury from the lookout is lovely. The town used to be one big black rock, but has since worked to re-green itself. It is now a beautiful, green city, thanks to pollution controls on the smelters and huge planting efforts. We toured "Dynamic Earth" which is a mining museum and is mostly composed of an underground tour that takes you through how the mines were at the turn of the century, 50 years ago, and current technology. Quite the change over time. Fact of the day: Sudbury had the highest per capita income in the WORLD in the 1950's. The area has been built on mining nickel and copper along with their rock-mates, gold, silver, palladium and platinum. Inco and Falconbridge are the two main employers now. Inco announced today that they will have the highest earnings EVER for Q2, 2006. They have managed to continually find efficiencies and reduce costs, even in the face of currency and oil cost increases.

Here's one of the new additions to our family: Sophia Cecutti. She's a lovely 2 month old full of smiles - especially for Mama. We got to visit her and her parents, Michael and Linda, Noni Paulina, Uncle Jamie and cousins Jared & Alexis. We had a fabulous time and they say a BIG HI to all of their relatives in BC.

We had a fun day today. The nextdoor neighbour, Ruth invited Yvonne to the playground and spray park, so we had a nice walk and a picnic at the park. On our way back, Yvonne played a little basketball. She's been watching the new Disney movie "High School Musical" in which the lead boy plays basketball. She worked hard to figure out how to dribble and did in fact figure it out. It's a nice warm sunny day today as witnessed by Yvonne being dressed only in her bathing suit. She's made freinds with Ruth's granddaughter, Mackaila, so they're busy playing Polly's.

Science North
Here's a picture of Yvonne coming out a rectum. Yes, you heard me right - it's changed a lot nowadays - we would never say the word out loud, forget actually type it for public eyes. Science North currently has the Grossology exhibit which takes all the "gross" bodily functions and explains them for kids and gets them doing fun things to really "get it". Yvonne had a hoot making toot noises with different levels of "tightness" to the sphincter. You can imagine there were a few belly laughs at this exhibit. This picture is the end of a slide that starts out with the kids climbing into a big mouth, sliding down an esophagus, dropping into a big stomach and climbing out a rectum. Quite a well done exhibit for a somewhat delicate subject. Jim and I learned some good factoids too. Here's one for you. Did you know that the average person swallows a LITRE of snot every day!!!! GROSS. This exhibit was in Vancouver a couple years ago and was the most popular exhibit ever hosted. We unfortunately missed it, so we were happy to see what all the fuss was about.