Monday, May 07, 2007

Trip

We enjoyed a grand time in Fort Wayne the last couple of days. We stayed with dear friends. We went to church at a place with kneelers and my daughter's favorite Easter hymn. Jane invited a few other homeschool friends over for Saturday evening, and that was a blast!

While in Fort Wayne, we buzzed past the apartment complex that Katie and Nathan will be moving into next month. It sure is nice looking! Wow! Maggie especially likes the scuplted hedges.

On Saturday morning, Gary was checking one last time for the information on getting into Canada. He realized that it could be that the adults, not only the children, would need to prove American citizenship, and that a drivers license and voters registration card wouldn't necessarily be enough. (What do the border-crossing guards know about illegal voting in the US that the Wisconsin legislature does not know??) Anyway, Gary made a quick run to the bank to fetch birth certificates from the safe-deposit box.

The lesson learned yesterday is that you should go potty before crossing the border into another country. A certain child informed us that we had to stop as we were approaching Detroit. But it was a big city and crowded and we were watching roadsigns. We thought we'd have to stop at the border anyway. Well, guess what? After being good little citizens, and hauling out the drivers licenses and the state IDs and the birth certificates, we approached the border. The guard asked where we were from, where we were going, and why. Quite the funny look in his eye when we told him that we were attending a symposium and what the topic was! There was a tourist information bureau just a block or so from the border. Of course, it was closed on a Sunday evening. So no maps. No information on exchanging currency. And worse, no potty. With the twists and turns in the tunnel, it was hard to figure out which way we were supposed to head out of downtown Windsor. So we drove in circles for a while. Thankfully the sun was starting to go down, so that helped with establishing directions. Finally found a gas station, but they had no potties. Drove a little further and found a Subway. So we hurried in a bought something before a little girl exploded. Whew!

The boys kept looking for signs of how different Canada looked from the US. About the only thing they noticed was that the flags have no blue on them, and the word "centre" switched the last two letters. In yesterday's installment the story we are currently reading aloud, the main character crossed the border from Connecticut into New York, the first time in his life he'd been out of his home state. He was disappointed that it didn't look nor feel any different. So my boys had to make the same statements about crossing into Canada. Stinkers!

4 comments:

  1. Sorry for the off topic comment, but we were astounded, moving out of Wisconsin, at what is required of us to vote in our new location. When we voted for the first time we were amazed to see little digital images of our signatures in the log books at the polling place. They were transferred from the DMV when we registered to vote while we got our new car titles. (The evil Motor-Voter idea that gets shot down in Wisconsin every time it comes up!)

    Then again, we now live in a state with long-standing history of dead people voting... guess they've learned to be careful. The last time we voted in Wis, all three of the previous owners of our house were still on the rolls...

    Have a great trip!

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  2. I'm sure the Caseys will be thrilled to have Nathan and Katie so nearby. Enjoy the rest of your trip!

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  3. Mrs Elephant, being from Illinois and knowing what goes on in Chicago elections, I thought I could not be one to cast stones about election irregularities. But then I realized something. Sure, dead people vote in Illinois. But in Illinois, dead people only get one vote. In Wisconsin they can vote more than once, as can the living. So I guess even the Daley machine ain't got nothin' on Milwaukee voting!

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  4. The Caseys will definitely be thrilled to have Nathan and Katie nearby. And their apartment will be just about two minutes from Bethany when she's on campus.

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