Lil and Grace's Excellent Wisconsin Adventure

As promised, we loaded the kids into the Mom-van this week and headed to see Aunti Anne and Uncle Scott for the Canadian Thanksgiving weekend. Naturally, all family vacations are preceeded by a trip to the ER, auto repairs, the pager being dropped in the toilet, and a return trip home for the potty chair and antibiotics. But once on our way, the 10 hour drive was relatively simple except for the hourly stops induced by the antibiotic therapy.

The loan of Aunti Cathy's Garmin navigator was the saving grace of this particular journey, especially driving through Chicago which I find only marginally worse than driving Montreal. Our deal is that I do the crazy driving while Tony navigates mostly because I am a lousy map reader and he drives like an obstetrician. However, the Garmin gave me a mile warning for any turn-offs and readjusted if I took the wrong turn. This saved the usual stream of potty talk that arises when my dear man says "Oh you should have turned off at the last intersection." So the Garmin is at the top of my Xmas list followed closely by a backhoe and chainsaw (gardening essentials).

Lil and Grace have had a great time running around the woods, playing with Gus and Gordon (the lab and cat comedy team), feeding the goats at a local farm and fishing off the dock. We roasted marshmellows, collected leaves and took in the magnificant colours signalling the change of season. Anne and Scott live in a little piece of heaven, surrounded by woods, nature and water, and we love the getting-away-from-it-all sense out here. It has been a good rest and as usual having the family around nurtures our spirits.

Today we'll share our thanksgiving dinner around Annie's big table and talk about plans to meet again...because tomorrow is going home day.