Welcome to Canada, eh?

Yesterday was a travel day for us... We were all awake around 7am after a late night packing and saying goodbye to friends. It was very apparent the night before that our packing situation needed some assistance. We were running out of room and not quite finished. So Elijah and I took an outing to the Mercado where we'd seen luggage before. Sure enough after a drive through, we found a stall and parked the van. I excited the van the normal way, but something seemed amiss.
"Elijah", I inquired. "Did we have this back , side window in the van when we left this morning.
Elijah sauntered over to my side for a look. "I think so", he said. "If it wasn't there, I sure didn't notice."

We calmly looked over the situation until we were reminded of our task. "Wait a minute", I thought. "we're not here for windows. We're here for a suitcase- we'd better hurry."

And off we went to purchase the necessary item.

Luggage in hand, we drove down the same bumpy, rutted, crazy road we came in on- looking for piles of glass that may be our window.

Almost near the end of the rutted-roller-coaster ,type road we came upon a perfectly healthy, single piece of tinted glass that looked an awful lot like the one we had lost- right there in the middle of the road! We took it, put t in the open window and drove over to the auto-glass guys place in our neighbourhood. Turns out he only moonlights in autoglass and has a real job the rest of the day- he won't be back till 7 or 8 tonight... we want to go to the airport in 2 hours...
Off to the next autoglass place.
The fella there looked at the job and fiddled with it until almost 10:00- official take off time, only to declare "I'm done trying- take it to the next autoglass shop 1/2km down the road.

That shop was very accommodating. He looked at the taped up semi-glued in window for about 5 minutes- then left to deal with another customer. When he returned, he had a business card for yet another autoglass place that may be willing to try- but it was somewhere in Tijuana, not in Rosarito where we live- all of a sudden I came to the stark realization- its after 10:00 AM, we have a breezy van that we cannot take over the border-- and our options of transportation are running out- we need to find a way over soon.
We borrowed a YUGO Van, after a few phone calls, and found ourselves with a very short border wait and some time to spare to do some of the errands we had planned on doing. We made it to the airport and were in the security checkpoint 30 minutes before boarding. We made it on time!

The boys loved the plane-- Jacob was a little unsure at first saying it made him feel a bit strange as we ascended during take-off. He had brought some stuffed animals along for the ride and declared before we had reached cruising altitude that the puppy didn't really like fling very much, it made his stomach woozy. About 15 minutes later, though, he lifted the window blind and was right into it- so was Jacob.

As we were flying towards Seattle airport we were amazed to see- quite a far distance above the clouds- three huge-- i mean HUGE mountains bursting through the cloud layer. One is Mt. Rainer, the other St. Helens but I don;t know the third. They looked so out of place from everything else we'd seen on the ground- it was very cool.

When we approached the Seattle airport and broke through the cloud layer- Elijah exclaims loud enough for several rows of people to hear " look at all the trees, dad- LOOK AT THEM!! Do you think they are all real? That's a lot of stinking trees! Why do they have SO MANY TREES!!??!?"

Wonder if this kids been living in the desert for the last10 months!

After a 2 1/2 hour layover we boarded our propeller plane for Edmonton- it was big enough for about 60-70 people but was a little over half full. While we were waiting to board a couple sitting across from us in the waiting area asked the boys if they were excited to go flying? The boys got excited telling the about the trip so far. We found out that the couple was from Edmonton area and had just been in Alaska fishing. When we told them we were from Mexico- they asked- what are you doing in Canada.
Elijah declared "we are going home to raise support, talk in camps and churches, to hang out with friends and for my mom to have surgery"== he's heard the line before eh?

"You must be missionaries then".
"Yes" said Elijah.
"We were in Mexicali on a mission trip in 2001, with a group called YUGO, do you know them?"
"YES said Elijah excitedly!"

We're going out for breakfast with them today!

We'll keep this updated when we can-- we're off to Loon Lake today and will be without steady internet access till Tuesday night in Swan River.

Untilnextime, eh.

Mike for the family