Connor and Liam go to America

After a long and hellish week we woke up bright and early Saturday morning and headed off to Seattle but this time we brought the boys. We'd been pumping them up all week (not to mention using it as blackmail) about the big surprise they'd be getting on Saturday. The zoo! And no offense to the Greater Vancouver Zoo, or whatever it's called, but a real zoo.

Morning started out well. Kids got up ok, no problems with breakfast, no delays, nice weather, traffic was good and the radio said the border line-ups were only 40 minutes long. Now I know what you're thinking, now everything goes to hell, right? No. I thought it was going to though. Got to the border and the guy in front of us gets flagged. Then the guy in the lane beside us gets flagged too. Then the motorcycle beside him. It wasn't looking good. We get waved ahead, guard takes our id's, asks the usual questions. Then the guard asks Bern if she was born in Thailand. Bern says yes, then quickly corrects herself and says Laos. Then he says something in Thai. I sit there grinning stupidly, silently begging Bern to answer the man. Forget all the other official questions, this is the real test. Finally Bern gets what he's saying, which is apparently papaya salad (her family says it differently being that they're from different region). Now we're all best buddies because with Bern's people, EVERYTHING is about food. Whatever, off we went.

The zoo was great and super easy to get to. Once you get in there are paths that go off to the left or right. Straight ahead is a mock up of a Masai village. You go into the little school and the far wall opens up to this huge field where antelope, giraffe's, and zebra's are wandering around. What does Liam want to look at? A duck swimming in a pond below the school. Buddy! That's a freaking giraffe over there eating that tree! Zebra's! Come on. A duck?

Connor was not impressed by anything. All he cared about was getting to the lions. After which he just wanted to go home. Until they found the penguins. That was different. Penguins! PENGUINS!!!



Anyway, that was the day. All in all the boys were pretty good. Would have been nice if they'd fallen asleep on the ride home, but there were no real tantrums. Now came the part of the day I'd been dreading, trying to get back into FORTRESS CANADA. If you read the blog on our last trip you'll understand why. This time the only thing we'd bought was $13.97 worth of stuffed animals, and I'd much rather face the wrath of Customs than two cranky over-tired little boys. Things were looking good when we got there. There was barely a line up at all and the guards weren't stopping anybody. And the reason they weren't stopping anybody? It was 10 to 8, shift change. We're not that lucky though. Eight o'clock and the new guard showed up before we made it through. I was sure we'd get flagged because of our last trip, but the guy only took our id and asked us the usual questions. Felt like we were getting away with something when he waved us through. Hee hee!