My wife and I have experienced so many things in our 35+ years together but we are still together and today we live a great lifestyle.  We have gone from living in a highrise apartment to living in our parents basement.  We have gone from having secure jobs to having no jobs.  We have gone from having nothing to having the world at our fingertips.  We raised two daughters that have made us proud and we are now grandparents to four of the most adorable grandkids a person could ever want.

We recently took retirement from our careers and left on the dream vacation we have planned for a number of years.  We promised ourselves that when we retired and had the time we would visit California.  We spent four months travelling across the United States through extraordinary historic places like South Dakota and then down the California coast while driving the Pacific Coast Highway.  We then headed east through Nevada, New Mexico, Arizona, and Texas where the trip again brought a number of adventures and meetings with quite interesting people before starting back north toward Canada and home.  We visited historic landmarks, historic gravesites, real ghost towns, "cowboy towns" that have not changed, and sites where Hollywood movies were made.  I had my picture taken with Dora the Explorer which now has my granddaughters (oldest is 5) thinking Dora is my close friend.  Being a car guy we had to make a stop at the salt racing flats of Salt Lake City, Utah and spend a few moments using our imagination.  The trip was wonderful but I confess that we are glad to be back home even if it is only for a short time before the urge to go hits again.

I started out by saying that we have gone through much in our lives and today we are living proof that if you keep a positive attitude you can accomplish almost anything when life seems to be kicking you to the curb and cement walls seem to be the only thing you find at each corner of your life.