Traveling, Fighting & Going Home Too Soon

In November of last year we went to Canada for a super quick visit to my in laws. Zander had never met Kris’s dad, so we thought it was time! This trip was last minute and not well planned. I shared pictures of the trip, but realized I haven’t written about it at all! And there were a few exciting things worth sharing so here it goes. I divided it up into the most interesting parts – the travel, the island, the family and the UNEXPECTED ENDING… 🙁

The Travel

The trip there was caaaaa-razy. Oh my gosh. Three planes, two taxis and two ferries. In total we were traveling…. 18 hours I think it was? By some miracle the kids were relatively calm on the flights. We had Zander in a carseat which made a huge difference. There was only one major puking episode from our motion-sick girl Zoey. Other than that, the flights were pretty uneventful.

When we made it to Vancouver, we had scheduled a small float plane to take us the rest the way. We paid way too much money getting a taxi, to the float plane. When we got there it was snowing and really foggy.  The plane looked so tiny against the big clouds and fog. Thats when Kris and I had a disagreement. I told him there was NO WAY I was getting on that tiny plane, with my precious babies, in the snow, ice, and fog. My gut feeling was this would not be safe. Kris was pretty firmly against my gut feeling, and wasting the $$$$ spent on booking the float plane (no refunds for gut feelings telling you not to fly).

We could not agree on whether to get on that plane or not, but luckily the captain agreed with me! Half hour later we found out the plane would not be flying, due to bad weather. Lesson of the day: Rachael is always right. We took another expensive taxi ride to the ferryboat, and hopped on the last one to Vancouver Island, and then finally (late at night and exhausted) got a boat to Salt Spring Island. It was quite a journey.

The Island

It was sooooo cold! I had only packed light jackets since west coast of Canada is usually warmer than Erie, PA. It was only light jacket weather when we left Erie. When we arrived in Vancouver it was snowing and soooo cold out. Due to it being freezing we mostly spent time inside.

The Family

It was really exciting for us to introduce Zander to a lot of my family that had never met him before. We made a special trip to visit my aunt and my grandparents. My aunt loved on my kids as if they were her own and it made my heart so happy to see what a strong network of caring people my kids have, even though they all live WAY too far away. The best part was getting to see my grandparents. Seeing my grandpa hold Zander almost brought me to tears, spending just a few hours with them was priceless and something I won’t soon forget. My grandparents have always been a huge influence in my life, and true to form they shared with me wisdom and inspiration that was life changing for me at that point. The best part is I don’t think they even realized they did that. They were just being themselves. These pictures are from the day visiting my grandparents, we took the ferry over to go see them.

The Unexpected Ending

We were planning on staying for longer, but we had to cut our trip short. Kris had a one hour meeting that he thought he could get out of on Monday, and we were planning to fly back Wednesday. It turns out that the school is very strict about one hour meetings. So we ended up paying almost two grant in extra return tickets.  Also, since the meeting was 8 hours away from our home, Kris also got to do an extra 16 hours of driving and had to pay for a hotel. Our original return tickets were just a loss, no refund or flight credit since the rescheduling was all our fault….

The meeting was just a rotation introduction. He got a tour of the hospital and an overview of how the rotation would go… Probably all information that could have been conveyed in five minutes over email. Basically it was a very important meeting, and we are SO happy that we got to spend all that extra money… *sarcasm*

Despite being cut short the visit was lovely for the most part. It definitely filled my cup to see my grandparents – oh and getting our family pictures done while we were there was another MAJOR highlight. Thank you Kari!!

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My Booties: Qupid | Zoey’s Shoes: Vans