bye-bye, Oh Canada ... sadly!

Friday ... July 2 ... our last day in Canada ... we spent the morning playing with the girls, packing our suitcases (and a new trunk that we had to buy to get all of Ashley's old baseball, football & hockey cards and some other childhood memoriabilia back home with us), and saying bye-bye (which Kendall says now).

No pictures of our very sad, tearful good-bye ... the girls were soooo sweet & just did not want us to go ... and we didn't want to go either, but we needed to start our drive back to Seattle. The whole good-bye was very sad ... Hannah kept hugging me & saying "but I don't want you to go, Aunt Texas" ... both Hannah & Sadie gave Kendall 100 kisses & hugs good-bye. They were such good "little mommys" to Kendall for 10 days ... and Kendall adored them ever bit as much ... I knew we'd all go through withdrawals! It is sad to have to say good-bye to family ... we always have such a great time together and then it will probably be at least another year to 18 months before we will get to see them again ... Kendall will be at least 2 by then & will have changed so much, as will the girls. Not getting to see them & be in their lives more often (and in Kendall's life) is truly the hardest part about living so far apart.

after waiting in a 1.5 hour line-up to cross the border,
the USA sign was a GREAT sight to see!

LOVE the red, white & blue!

(We called them to let them know we had crossed the border and Mary told us that poor sweet Hannah, who doesn't show any emotion to anyone publicly, cried & cried for 30 minutes, saying she missed us, missed Kendall ... and she could not be consoled.)

We drove to Seattle ... got our hotel room ... ate dinner at Red Robin ... dropped off our rental car ... re-packed a few things & went to bed ... we were to unfortunately have a VERY early start to the next day!


Saturday ... July 3 ... we were up, showered & dressed, all luggage down to the lobby, checked out of our hotel room, continental breakfast consumed & on the hotel shuttle to the airport by 6:30am ... and I should also mention ... quite tired and dealing with a sick Kendall!

We got to the airport with hundreds of other people all checking in with the airline we were with and finally got our turn up to the ticket counter ... we were on another completely full flight, so they offered to check any of our carry-on luggage for FREE ... YES, Please! We also (AGAIN) didn't have seats together, so when the agent asked if we wanted to upgrade our tickets for $25 (each seat) & that we'd be sitting together ... I asked for that to include both flights ... and she said she'd do that for us ... so we did it ... the best $50 we've spent (I like to look at like we paid $12.50 for each of our seats & I think that's great!) ... front row seats on both flights (that's the 1st time I'd ever sat on a "row 1" my entire life!), extra leg room, sitting together ... with our sick sweet Kendall ... who did amazingly well & slept nearly the entire time on both flights in my arms and never cried once (even though, she had double ear infections, which was diagnosed the next day!) ... she is such a good baby!

We made it back to our house that late afternoon ... from a great trip to Vancouver, BC!  So many 1st's were experienced by Kendall and we're happy to have taken such a great 1st vacation as a family of 3 ... but, it's also good to be back home!


I've got one more post to do of our vacation ... it's the Rogers family photos that we had taken while we were there ... so stay tuned for just a few more pictures, soon to come!