Thanks Jeff.............
An email to melabs support got me the answer. Here it is:
I2Cread portc.4, portc.3, %01000000, command, [insin], noitwoc

Where command is what register you want to read 0 or 1. Now I get the value of the I/O expansion chip into the variable insin. Just missed the brackets around the variable name!

Now I'm trying to figure out the write command. Some difficulties, I'll post my results. Hope this helps someone. This is a nice chip set. The I/O's on pics go fast. Faster and faster the deeper I get into designing with them.

Joe