Canada - day 9 - July 4, 2010

Sunday morning came early and was very crazy. Try and imagine eight adults and four children trying to get ready for church. On top of that we had to make arrangements to pick up Grandma Leavitt (I volunteered for that job) and guide Fara, Kari & Barrett into the correct Location. If it was crazy before church however that was nothing compared to after church but I'm getting ahead of myself.

The blessing was wonderful. Justin did a great job and Landon received a wonderful blessing. Since there were many non-members at the meetings who would have left right after Sacrament Meeting we decided to ditch Sunday School and Priesthood meeting and heated to the house right after Sacrament Meeting. I won't even try and list who was at the house for a wonderful luncheon. Let's just say that you had to walk very carefully or you would step on someone.

Rod and Joanne Dyck came to Sacrament Meeting but weren't able to come over to the house after.

We'd seen them earlier that week in Rosemary but they were so busy with their responsibilities on the July 1 celebrations that we didn't get to visit very much. I also got to spend a bit more time with Fara as well. It was so good to have everyone there but I didn't know who to visit with. I kind of rotated around them all but I really wanted to visit the whole time with everyone. As I mentioned earlier, Maurine was there and the Lundrigans also came over. They are special to us because when we moved to San Diego they were in our Stake. Lisa had known them in Edmonton so it was nice to have a little bit of a connection.

Since both our parents were thousands of miles away we kind of adopted them as our childrens grandparents and they willingly accepted the responsibility. They have certainly been a great blessing to our family.

Justins step father is a professional chef and he made all of the food. It was quite a spread. Everyone ate way too much and thoroughly enjoyed it.

Unfortunately it is a fact of life that all good things must come to an end and we soon realized that if we were going to make Jackie's house (in Blackfoot) before sunrise the next morning we'd better get moving. As usual we got left late and didn't arrive at Jackie's until about 3:00AM. She was a good sport and got up to greet us and guide us to our various beds. We kind of took over her house and she was very gracious about it.

I have to go back to our drive however. If you remember Brandon was travelling without a passport and the US has put in place some very strict rules about entering the US without a passport. While I was quite sure that they wouldn't leave him in Canada I was expecting them to run us through the ringer at the border. We really lucked out and ended up with a really nice guy at the border. He was a bit of a comedian and when he realized that Brandon didn't have a passport he called over his shoulder to some guy behind him. "you better go get the hand cuffs". It was pretty funny. Other than that the trip was rather uneventful. Everyone soon fell asleep and I had the night to myself.

I don't know what other people do to keep themselves awake when they've got several hours alone but I love to try and invent things in my head. Sometimes it is something practical that I'm working on at work but usually it is far out stuff. My kids are quite familiar with some of my far out inventions that I'll obviously never actually build but I've got them all designed in my mind and I really think that many of them would work.

Kira and Fara

Grandma Leavitt and Fara

The Leavitts and their San Diego grandparents who now live in Calgary. Bob and Virginia Lundrigan.