Oh Canada...

Hayden and Malachi
Keenan, Dolly, Bevin, Hayden
Takoda, Malachi, Montana and Talon

We took a very short jaunt up across the border into Surrey, BC to attend my nephew, Malachi's baptism. David and his kids came along in our van with me and my kids. Geeta had to stay home and work and Steve stayed home (actually spent Saturday in Seattle seeing sights and visiting the DuBois')to be with his brother Jim who was visiting from Hawaii. We made it over the border probably around 2pm after making a few stops along the way for oil, lunch and wiper blades.

After arriving at the McMullins and greeting everyone David and Bevin took the kids out for a ride to the beach and to the playground. I stayed behind and helped Dolly with household duties. How she does it with six kids with all their schedules (sports, school, church, etc...), delivering papers, doing her calling, keeping the house kept up, shopping, making dinner, etc.... I give her a big ten thumbs way up! I wish we lived closer so I could help her out more. I'm sure things are getting a bit easier in one sense, since the twins are in kindergarten and things will be even better when they're in first grade. That evening we were creative with the sleeping arrangements for the night. Apollo and Sarah slept in with Montana (I took a portacrib), Sascha slept in with Talon, Takoda and Malachi and Teesha slept in the TV room on the couch while Christian and I slept on the couches in the living room with David on the floor on the blow-up mattress.

After we'd all gone down for the night, I was trying to sneak some proof of David sawing some serious lumber. Usually when Steve's doing that at home I just give the bed a good hard thump and he stops. Well, with David on the ground, it wasn't as easy. Anyway, I pulled out my cell phone and pressed the record button when a loud, "LOOK HERE" played as well as a nice spotlight flashing on. I totally forgot that it says that when you're about to record. I was cracking up. It did stop him from snoring for the most part. Later the next day I heard that I was doing some sawing of my own during the night. I guess we're related 8-)

The McMullin's ward started at 9:30 and Ungle Deeb had Apollo most of the time. It was a nice break for me. Everyone's great with helping out. It's so nice having family around. Teesha and I went to YW with Dolly since that's where her calling is. There were probably only about 7-8 girls total in the whole YW. It almost seemed like there were more leaders than girls. Crazy!

After church we dropped the younger kids off at the house while us older kids drove around a little bit so Apollo could sleep longer. We enjoyed more scenery down by the beach. I had to break the Sabbath and buy Steve a box of Shreddies which he specifically requested. I blame him!!! We ran back to the house, cleaned up a little and ran out the door to the baptism.

A neat little tidbit about the day Malachi was baptized (March 9th) is that it was also Grandpa Don's birthday. And also on the cover of The Friend magazine back in March of 2000 there is a picture of a boy preparing for his baptism. Grandma Sandra brought that to Dolly's attention. So Dolly ended up checking out that issue at their library and showing it during her talk. Dolly gave a super talk on Baptism and even sang a solo to Malachi. Later she said that Malachi was mouthing the words of the song while she was singing it. Very cute!

Later on after Hayden performed the baptism, I gave the talk on the Holy Ghost. I always do my fun little goodie bag full of things to remind us of the Holy Ghost. Malachi listened intently while I gave the talk. He's such a sweet boy. Later on, the bishopric counselor said that he was expecting me to start pulling out a lamp like Mary Poppins does. It was quite hilar.

Then it was back to the house to load up the van and grab some grub (barbecue) and head out the door. We had a great visit. It was fun seeing how everyone had grown. Next time we'll have to plan a longer trip. The border was about an hour wait getting into the U.S. where it was only about 10 minutes getting into Canada. hmmmm... We'd already taken the ferry over on the way up so we ended up driving all the way home. Who knows if it saved us money or not since gas prices are outrageous. It's around $3.50 a gallon. And that's if you can find a bargain. It was a fun, short road trip and everyone behaved for the most part. So until the next one.... Toodles!
1 Response
  1. Emilee Says:

    Sounds like it was a fun adventure! Oh and to make the collage, you use Picasa2. Have you ever used that before? Well it's a place to keep all your photos and you can make changes to them, you can take out red eye, crop them, etc. And at the bottom there are several different options and one of them is collage. It's fun, you should give it a try. Love ya!