The exhaling portion of our journey

There is an end to adrenaline, and I welcome it. Thursday I was able to sleep in until almost eight. Bliss.

Later in the morning we were able to visit a friend of the family, Murray Wright, who my father had tasked with overcoming a few family history roadblocks we had encountered. The only thing we knew about my great grandfather is that "We don't talk about him." In the absence of information, rumours and conjecture abounds. The most persistent rumour having to do with a bank robbery in texas. It was understood that names were changed in a hasty flight to Canada. It has always been a little frustrating when people would ask, "Where do the Franks hail from?" to not be able to go back past my great grandfather. It turns out there was a name change, it was Frank with a 'C' and the Francks came from Germany by way of Lunenburg. Muray was able to take us back to the 1600s which is great start and I'm anxious to see where we go from here.

The afternoon was spent at the beach with Ellen's work. The sun was shining and the helicopter flybys made things interesting.

James has a new best friend.

That night we went out to dinner together. I am no real fan of Canadian history, I find it alternatively tedious and shameful, and Canadian culture is little more than watered down British culture with some resented American thrown in. However, there are a few national institutions that are worthy of genuine praise and patronage and last night, we visited one of those institutions: Swiss Chalet. From the outside, it may just look like another mid-level chicken chain. And the menu doesn't exactly overwhelm one with the options, but the lack of selection is actually one of its virtues. And any restaurant where the kid's quarter chicken dinner is more appealing than the chicken nugget option has got to be doing something right.

On Friday we did a little bit of shopping and were able to visit with some friends. We had a great visit with the Pinsents, some good friends of ours who ended up buying our house from us after we left. When talking to us, Niccola kept saying things like, "We really love your house." I felt like I had to keep reminding her that our name isn't on the deed anymore. However, she did feel enough ownership of the place to say, "By the way, you're not getting this place back. This is our retirement home." It made us feel pretty good to see that it had gone to a family that love it as much as we loved it.

We made the rounds with just Miranda because Liam, Lucy and James were all doing their own thing with their own friends. If we aren't careful, I could see this being one of those separate vacations where everyone does their own thing. There are some advantages to time away after so much time so close together. Our good friend Joel came over for a visit in the evening, and then, for some reason (probably some whacked out sense of tradition) we took in a late show of Transformers. I just don't know if spectacular special effects and the prospect of giant robots pummelling one another is reason enough to see a movie. There was a time when it would have been everything I would want in a movie, but now I'm looking for things like character and plot. Maybe I am growing up after all.