Warning: Picture Heavy

Ahhhh, so many places to see and so little time to do it all in!

We set off on our second adventure of the summer this past weekend. I have been mulling it over in my head since we returned from South Dakota, but Friday I decided to just pack the van and do it...so I filled up the cooler, threw some things into a suitcase and off we headed for Canada.




It was the fouth of July and the kids were eager to see some fireworks. I bought a few for us to set off on the side of the road while we were traveling and found out about a big fireworks display being held in a town called Saykston, North Dakota. In true...Math family fashion we pulled off at the rest area in Saykston, hopped into the back of the van and watched the pyrotechnics from a safe distance. We were actually close enough to town to hear the music from the big street dance in town.






The fireworks display put us behind schedule. We didn't arrive in Minot, ND until after midnight. In the morning we slept in and then headed over to the Minot Zoo, our only planned stop on the way up north. The zoo was smaller than some of the bigger zoos we've been too, but it was really nice. Interestingly, the kids were all most fascinated by the ducks and geese...ummm...hey guys, we have ducks and geese in our pond!







The weather was beautiful and by the time we had spend about 2 hours at the zoo, we were all hot and sweaty. That's when I noticed the waterpark on our way out of town. I decided to grab the swimsuits out of the suitcase and make an impromptu stop! After nearly two hours of swimming and going down the giant waterslide, the kids were ready to jump back into the car and head towards Saskatchewan. It's a good thing we had entertained ourselves earlier in the day because there wasn't much to see in northern North Dakota!






We got across the border without a problem and posed for a fun picture before heading on towards Regina.



Regina. The town that Andrew consistently pronounced like vagina...but with an r....I spent half of the trip correcting him and being upset with him for saying things like "what did you do on your summer vacation, Andrew? Oh, I went to rrruuuuhh...jine....ah" snicker, snicker.

The town that actually IS pronounced like vagina with an r. Seriously. One of the first things that Andrew did was ask someone how to pronounce it and wouldn't you know...I was wrong! Much to the delight of all of my children, it became ok to say ruuuhhhjine ah. Aidan kept saying that we were in vagina, so I corrected him. "It's with an r, honey....rrrrrrr, not vvvvvv". He took my hand and leaned up to me and said "It's ok, mommy, everyone knows it's called vagina, not ragina" and he was dead serious.

sigh. For all of my aggravation about the name of the city though, I have to admit that I couldn't help myself from giggling every time they said the name of the town on the radio! When I bought myself an "I love Regina" coffee cup, Andrew said "God, mom, you're so immature." Um yah, right!

We went to Chuck-E-Cheese the first night. Of course, the older kids insisted that there would be nothing there for them to do...yah...right!







Zoe was absolutely terrified of the Chuck-E-Cheese singing mouse and she cried everytime she noticed it. I'm starting to realize how sensitive and easily frightened she is! Poor little Zoe Christiney Beany!



We spent an entire day at the Saskatchewan Science Center in Regina and it was really nice. Though it was similar to the children's Science Museum in the twin cities, it wasn't as big and the displays were different. I enjoyed it a lot mroe because it was easier to navigate and we were able to do every single thing in the 4 hours that we were there!






Alex testing out Galileo's theory that objects with different masses will hit the ground at the same time when dropped.





My favorite display was the Magic Schoolbus weather station. I love Miss Frizzle! I had a college cell biology teacher that reminded me of her. She actually came into the classroom on our first day of lecture from the very back of the lecture hall and walked down the stairs singing to the tune of It's a small world: "It's a cell world after all....". She was always doing creative things to teach....like making me stand up in front of 200 kids one day and taping amino, carboxyl, hydrogen and r groups all over my body to show the structure of amino acids. Annoying to be sure...but I never forgot. When I taught, I always tried to model myself after this professor and come up with some unique, fun teaching things...though I never could go as far as to tape functional groups to kids heads! Rock on, Miss Frizzle!


There were a lot of really unique displays to see, and then at the end of it all, we saw a shark movie at the IMax and then the kids played outside on the playground.








On the way out of town as we headed towards Manitoba, I discovered the Regina VW Club. When I drove by slowly, they opened up the gate that they had to let us in to display our car. Crack me up...of course I didn't stop.




The trip to Manitoba wasn't without some excitement. My bank noticed that there were charges coming from MN (Thomas) and Canada. I stopped for gas in the middle of nowhere somewhere between Regina and Winnipeg and tanked up for $108 Canadian dollars and.....the charges were denied. I tried Thomas and I's joint account as well as my own private checking account. Denied. I had no cell phone reception in Canada and was wondering what the heck to do. I did have a different credit card with me, but it is for online use only and it has a small credit limit intentionally so that if the number gets stolen someone can't cause a lot of damage. I was near my limit, but the charges were accepted. I had to call Thomas collect. It turns out that there were multiple messages from the fraud dept. on our machine. He finally got in touch with someone who said that they would have to talk to me in order to give me access again. When he explained that I was in Canada with 5 children, no cell phone access, and no way to pay for gas the next time they agreed to temporarily lift the ban until I got back and called.

Yikes.

The trip across Canada was beautiful. There was nothing but land for miles and miles. I felt like I could literally reach out and touch the top of the world.




The clouds were incredible. They seemed to go on forever and were so low to the ground that in the distance they sometimes appeared to be mountains.



It was beautiful.




We spent the least amount of time in Winnipeg. The weather was dreary and the kids were feeling worn out from all of the traveling. We spent the night in a hotel there and then I had planned to visit the planetarium...instead, we decided to do a quick car tour of the city because of the rain and then just head on home.





Though we had no problem getting into Canada, the US border patrol did not want to accept the photocopies of the kids' birth certificates. Fortunately, I just got a long lecture with a few threats peppered in and then I was allowed to go on through. Otherwise, I guess I would have had to leave all 5 kids with him and drive home and get the original documents. :> hehehe...it might have taken a few weeks!

On the way home, I finally gave up on the fighting and bickering and...stopped in Grank Forks at a Gamestop and bought 4 used old Gameboy Advance systems that run on batteries...with 4 used games.



We had a wonderful trip![/quote]