Ryan isn’t the only person that travels far away.

I am in Bury St. Edmunds this week. Bury St. Edmunds, literally ‘the place of St. Edmund’ in Saxon English although they seem to have misplaced his remains in the 14th century. Bury St. Edmunds is now a tourist town about 90 miles northeast of London.

Here is a picture of where I am staying. The Angel Hotel which was once a carriage stop where people came to get out of London.

Across the street is the Abbey of St. Edmunds. Here is the Norman Tower, completed in 1148, that once protected the Abbey. Now it is the entrance to its gardens.

Here is a picture of the gardens.

I tried to pick up the two on the right.

In town center, on Saturday, the square is filled by vendors from the market.

Well I have to get back to work for now. Love to you all.

Pics from my birthday gathering!

My nephew Chandler & his buddy Stevie!















Guess who?














He's my favorite!














Yummy!

Hello from Linda...!

Hello to everybody! It's been a long time since I've been on the blog. It was great reading all of the family updates and seeing all of the pictures. Dorothy, you look beautiful as ever...such beautiful skin! Pat does such a great job keeping all of us posted. Thanks Pat!
We have had a busy year selling houses. That's a good thing. I was hit (a hit & run) over memorial weekend. Some crazy illegal from Mexico. He took off, ditched the car and ran. The fortunate thing was he was driving his daughters car AND she is insured. The short of the long of it is that I was in physical therapy for two months, etc. My car had $15,000 worth of damage and was in the shop or two months. I wish that they could of totaled it. It all was a huge inconvenience and a pain in the rear! I haven't even begun to settle.
Steven and I are going to Napa and San Francisco for 7 days the first of November. I'm home two days and off the New York City for a week to see my son, Justin. I've never been in the city when it's cold. Cold is OK...snow, not so much!
I guess Doug and Pat are coming to San Diego the week that I'm in the city...hmmm, think that was planed? They must of thought that they would have a better time with me out of here. I know that I will have the cleaning lady scheduled to come in...ha!
I will try to check in more often. I hope all is well with you all. Love, Linda

P.S. The pictures that I'm posting are from my birthday party that my daughter Tesha just had for me. She prepared all of the food, it was yummy!

Steven's Birthday Disneyland...2009

Entering Mickey's Toontown!

Gotta love Tiger!

Awwww what a happy couple on the Winnie the Pooh ride!

Oh geez! Here he is eating his favorite at Disneyland...anybody

want to guess? A Monte Cristo. A battered/fried

ham and cheese, yikes!

Entering the "happiest place on earth"!

I actually can't see Russia from my House

Hello Grandma and Family!

How's everybody doing? It looks like Uncle Pat's BBQ was pretty fun. I'm bummed we weren't able to make it home for that, but I'm heading to Nik's wedding and then the 'burgh during the second week in September.














So, Shannon and I arrived in AK about two weeks ago. Shannon is the newest professor at the Environmental Studies and Geography department at the University of Alaska at Anchorage!








We drove up through the Canadian Rockies and Banff. It was gorgeous...the mountains were just immense. Lots of wildlife too (bear, bighorn sheep, bald eagles, wolves, chupacabras, sasquatch, etc.)



































Then we jumped on the ferries for a couple days. The ferry was a pretty rad way to see all the islands. Plus we saw beluga whales, porpoises, mermaids, Sirens, and several Hydras.








The ferry is a very social scene. For example we met this younger Australian naval guy who taught us how to string a trip wire around our tent with claymores to protect us from bears!











We also saw cousin John Archambeau in Juneau. It was super fun, we toured the town and went on a tram ride (owned by the hotel he works with) to have some great views from about 3000 ft above the Juneau coast line. He also hooked us up with about two pounds of halibut that he caught, which was very tasty the next couple of days on our baby Weber.






Finally after about 10 days from Moscow, ID we rolled into Anchorage Alaska. As you drive down from the Interior, you pass the Mat-su glacier which fills a valley with beautiful blue and white ice covered by clouds that disect the peaks from the glacier. Anchorage has a great trails/park system that makes it easier to use these than actually drive around the incredible sprawl that fills the Anchorage bowl.



As we didn't have a place to rest our heads when we arrived in Anchorage, Shannon's colleagues had arranged for us to stay in the dorm for the first couple of nights.


Cody, our canine love child, felt right at home. In fact, the first night she was there she stayed out a little too late, and slept until about noon the next day. Typical college kid! Since Shannon is faculty, Cody can take classes for free. She has enrolled in underwater basket weaving and moved back into the dorms.







Right now we're in a temporary condo, but will be moving to a very small house that is pretty close to the University. Shannon should be able to cross country ski to work every day once the snow falls...which is probably going to be next week. Until then though, we're enjoying the greenery and having more than just 3 restaurants at our disposal. We've already met some good folks here. We were out at Shannon's Department head the other day and saw our first Grizzly bear which was way cool....especially since it didn't try to eat us....
Well, I should get back to work. Hope you all are doing well. Sorry, about the format of this, it looks like I need a little more practice. Love you all!