Toronto Trip: Part One

We had such a fantastic time visiting Canada!

Since we left on Wednesday-the 31 week mark-we didn't get a picture of my belly at 31 weeks. I'm not too broken up about it, since we were taking an awesome trip to visit so many people that I love instead of just forgetting for no good reason. :)

The only unpleasant thing that happened to us on our trip happened as soon as we got to Toronto; the airline misplaced our luggage. It's very fortunate that it wasn't lost, but having it misplaced was almost as bad. It was super irritating as you can imagine, but I felt extra put out because I had to wear my dirty, smelly clothes much longer than I would have liked, and I couldn't brush my teeth or take out my contacts. Sleeping in your contacts feels gross, in case you haven't had the experience, and so does waking up with grimy, slimy teeth that haven't been brushed. Despite the irritating situation, however, we were very blessed. We needed to leave Toronto for Belleville (the 3rd and final area of my LDS mission which is about 2 hours outside of Toronto-unless I'm in a hurry, in which case it takes about an hour and a half) by about 2pm so we could be on time for our evening plans. Our luggage was supposed to be delivered "in the morning" but by about 11am it still hadn't come and we were getting nervous. The airline was unhelpful, ineffective and had seemingly no control over where they put our luggage. So we decided to say a quick prayer to ask for some help from the person who could actually do something about our situation. Not too long afterward we got a phone call from the driver of the luggage delivery van. He's not with the airline, but has a separate company that delivers stray luggage. He wanted to make sure that he had the correct address for us and to give us an approximate delivery time. The delivery time he was planning on wasn't until at least after 3pm, which was way too late, so I asked him if we could just meet him somewhere and get our bag from him in the next 30 minutes. Miraculously, he was willing to do that for us! So we set out for an area of Toronto that I was completely unfamiliar with, and eventually made it and got our bag! It was really impressive to me that in this situation so beyond our control, we were able to get what we needed and get on our way. Prayer is powerful, people!

After we got back with our bag we were able to shower, change, brush our teeth and get ready to go. We were still a little bit behind schedule, but not nearly as behind as we would have been otherwise. So we hurried out to Belleville and picked up Richard, a somewhat recent convert that I had the opportunity to teach, and took him with us out to the Heaps' home for dinner. We saw Richard and the Heaps two years ago on our last Toronto trip, but they both had changed quite a bit in that time. Richard has overcome all of his addictions, which made him look and seem so much happier, and the Heaps' children had all grown-while Josh Heaps lost weight and got a lot smaller! At our last dinner in the Heaps home we played my favorite game, "Bohnanza", which was so much fun that they requested we bring it again.

Little Henry Heaps helped me keep track of my gold. :)

Richard took SO MANY pictures while we played. In this one, he just jabbed Jeff in the side.

Now here's a normal one. Isn't Jeff so handsome?

After we finished playing our game Richard wanted us to go back to his place with him and visit for a little while.

Even though we didn't plan tons of things for Thursday (only two things, really) we were still super exhausted by the end of the day...which was about 9:30, so we called it a night after we saw Richard.

Friday was also pretty low-key. We took our time in the morning and went out to see one of my dear friends, Mrs. Saunders, for lunch and a visit. She made us cucumber sandwiches on pumpernickel bread, which apparently is a traditional Canadian tea sandwich (that was a new discovery for me). It was my first time eating pumpernickel bread, and I really enjoyed it. The cucumber sandwiches were delicious, of course, and visiting with Mrs. Saunders was so wonderful! Sometimes Jeff and I find ourselves thinking and saying things that are "old-fashioned" or aren't considered forward-thinking enough, mostly when we talk about letting our kids grow up with natural consequences, failures, and disappointments instead of shielding them from any and all hardships in life. It was nice to have Mrs. Saunders respect and support us in our parenting ideals since we respect her judgement and often find ourselves in the minority among our generation. I'm sure I could go on and on about how great it was to talk with Mrs. Saunders, but I think I'm okay to end it there. :) I will show you a picture, though!

Everyone was really excited for our pregnancy and touched my belly a lot!

After leaving Mrs. Saunders, we hurried over to see the Heaps again before we spent the rest of the evening with our friends Rob and Vivian O'Neill.

Henry lost both of his bottom teeth Thursday night after we visited!

And there are the teeth!

Josh, Bethany, Henry and Me. I'm not sure where the other kids were, but they didn't make it into the picture.

We felt so blessed to be able to spend time with the O'Neills, since they're two of my favorite people in the world, and are basically my Canadian parents.

We ate a really delicious dinner with them, which included (as always) my favorite organic brownies with ice cream and spent some good time catching up and visiting. They even gave us some great advice about raising our little man. When I was a missionary their home was my sanctuary. Whenever I left I felt rejuvenated and able to tackle a few more months of missionary work. During this visit, I left feeling uplifted and rejuvenated about my life-motherhood, educational goals, personal fulfillment-and I'm so grateful that the O'Neills are so willing to give of themselves to do that for me.

I think that's gonna be it for Part One. Part Two will cover our time in downtown Toronto and our "Pilgrim"-age.  So stay tuned for that!

Thanks for reading!