Arriving in Montreal: The Drive

We have been so immersed in everything happening in Montreal that the drive here almost feels like a dream...a long awful dream that you are very glad to wake up from. We left on Friday, the 2nd. It was a beautiful day for a drive. We said our teary eyed good-byes to our families, buckled into the U-Haul and began driving. That is when the excitement began.

The truck began moving and Tucker, who was sitting at my feet and is our dog, freaked out, jumped on my lap and tried to climb over me to hide behind a seat or something. We all burst out laughing as Jayne and I tried to restrain him so he wouldn't end up by the driver's side. I kept him on my lap for about an hour till he calmed down. Then I put a blanket on the floor for him to curl up by my feet. He was fine for a while, but then he noticed the gap under the seat. He started wiggling his way in and we all thought it was cute...until he got stuck. That space was much smaller than he had thought. We stopped and he popped himself out. Every time I put him down there he tried to go under the seat, so I drove the whole way, 4 days, roughly 1,400 miles, with our dog on my lap.

Day 2 we drove in an ice storm through Chicago. We drove 13 hours that day. It started with snow and changed to ice around Chicago. The second half of the day was just rain. We were all pretty temperamental that day. Day 3 was about 10 hours of driving. It was 60 degrees when we woke up and we were racing the wind. We knew the storm was bringing 60 mph winds and we got an early start. Most of the day brought dense fog and rain. About an hour before we reached our last hotel, the wind caught up to us. We drove into town to find downed power lines being fixed. We could hear the gales outside throughout the night. In the morning we had another beautiful day to drive.

We hit the border about an hour or 2 into driving. We went in with nothing but our paperwork, not knowing what to expect. It was quite intimidating as we were basically interrogated off and on for 3 1/2 hours. The man helping us did at least get more friendly toward the end. Driving in Quebec was hard. All the signs are in French, which we expected. It was just incredible to see Montreal as we drove across the bridge for the first time. We had waited so long to get there and we were so close to home. It did not take long after that to get horribly lost.

Driving in Montreal was scary. Everything was covered with ice, since they had also been hit by the ice storm. Cars were parked in the lanes, people were walking in the streets, and we were right in the middle with a huge U-Haul. We finally found where we were on the map and found our way to our Montreal apartment. We were greeted by Dave Hemmerle and his kids we got everything moved into the apartment with their help and help from the Pinneys, as well. It was a long journey, that I am not looking forward to doing again. At least we will have a better idea of what to expect come November.

World Travels: Guatemala

Hello!

Dinah and I enjoyed our first trip on the hot air balloon so much! It was amazing seeing the earth from so high up. We floated through the sky for a very long time, going wherever the wind blew. When we were ready to touch ground we found a perfect break in the trees. 

We couldn't believe where we landed! There were old stone buildings all around us. Lots of people were walking around looking at them. A girl named Nicole came to see our balloon and told us we were at the ruins of a Mayan village in Guatemala. She showed us around the ruins. We climbed many, many stairs and saw lots of carvings in the rocks too. The Mayans even had a ball court because they liked to play sports too!

Nicole was a tourist visiting Guatemala  She had seen many markets and had even gotten to see were they grow coffee beans, bananas and cocoa beans. She even gave us some of the bananas she got straight from the tree! She shared some fresh chocolate with us too. Our trip to the Mayan ruins was incredible, and we made a new friend too! We'll write to you again soon!

Photo of Tikal from Nicole

We are going to work this into our geography/history study of the mountains. I am going to put a banana and a bar of chocolate in his package this month. I downloaded Google Earth, so we will check out Guatemala on there. We will be reading the mountain section of the book Wild Places.

Also, we'll be watching several videos about Guatemala and the Mayan people that are available for free on Amazon Prime Instant Video.

Guatemala Episode

Lost King of the Maya and Maya Lords of the Jungle

Passport to Adventure: Guatemala's Dramatic Lake Atitlan Region

World Travels: Introduction

Welcome to the first installment of World Travels! This all came about from our desire to do Little Passports, but with more freedom as to what countries we learn about and when. I am posting some of the material on the blog so that others can also enjoy the work I put into them. They might as well get more use than just one use at our house. The "packages" I send my little guy will include a letter from Delbert and Dinah, a photo, a flag sticker from the country they are visiting for his passport, and some fun souvenirs. If you haven't done anything like this before, you should know that we also have a map to locate the country, a small suitcase to put all these goodies in, and a play passport. Those would be great items to add to this first package. My normal set up will be letter first, then the picture, then notes about what we are doing such as souvenirs, activities, ect. My little guy already knows we are doing this and has the basics from his Little Passports from the past few months, so the letter is all he will be getting this time around.


Hello!

My name is Delbert. My good friend Dinah got a very special Christmas gift this year, a hot air balloon! Can you believe it? It is beautiful, with gold, red, and black stripes. Dinah had a great idea of how to use her special gift. I bet you can't wait to hear her idea! Well, she thought we should travel the world in her balloon. I thought it was a great idea and said yes right away.

I came up with a great idea of my own too. I knew we would learn so many new things about lots of countries we have never seen. Then I thought we should share. We thought long and hard about who we should share our adventures with, and we thought of you!

Dinah and I are going to have so much fun traveling all over the world in the hot air balloon. We hope that you have fun learning along with us too. I will write again soon when we land in our first country!

Balloon photo © Walleyelj | Stock Free Images & Dreamstime Stock Photos

Winter is Coming

That's right! It comes without much bother to most people. Not for us. I may or may not have shared in March that we sold our car, our only car. People, not us, freaked out a little bit. "What will you do?" "how will you get places?" The list goes on. My Mother even called to let us know we can have my brother's car for the year since he is in Germany that long. Sigh...

The last few months have been wonderful and I think it is hard for others to understand that we made this choice not out of financial need, but because we simply wanted to simplify our life a little. We don't shop as much, when we go places it is special. We have become more active in our church and have had time for local events. The financial gain was a nice perk, but not the reason.

As I mentioned, winter is coming. So, what happens to us then? Absolutely nothing different. We walked everywhere last winter, even with a car, and we will do it again. The only issue we thought we might have was groceries. We can't bike the kid carrier to the grocery store when it starts snowing. Oh, no! We will die without food! Yes, in my not so infinite wisdom, I was in fact able to think of that back in June and we gradually built our supplies of storable food. Our pantry is now full and Adam, being a grocery store employee, can pick up the other odds and ends on his way home from work over the course of the week.

We had to plan out our winter. Do any of you do winter planning?

Brand New at The Crazy Elephant

We have a new addition to the merchandise family at The Crazy Elephant! They are pantiliner packs. I have been using my own for a while now and I finally have the first one for sale. Now you can tote your little peanut pantiliners in style! This little pack is a great way to conceal your spare liner in your purse or contain your used one till you get it to the laundry basket. Each pantiliner pack is made with a cotton outer layer and nylon on the inside. Simply fold you liner in thirds and slide it inside the pack. It makes a package size about the same size as a traditional use and toss liner but is so much more fun!

Get Active

In an effort to get people moving in this cooling season, The Crazy Elephant is kicking off Get Active a digital walk-a-thon. Participants will be entering in their actual walked miles or miles travelled through anyform of aerobic activity and digitally and collectively walking from Minnesota to Paris. The project is taking place on Facebook and will end when a grand total of 4206 miles have been walked. All participants will be recieving a 10% off coupon for http://artfire.com/users/thecrazyelephantboutique and 1 lucky winner will be getting a free lunch set of their choice. If you would like to join in on the fun, just visit the facebook page and become a fan here.