Day 36 - Montreal and the Famous Mr. B.

Day 36 - Montreal, KOA, QC - Renee’s House, Ontario

September 25, Thursday, 2014

Today was all about driving. I didn’t want to lose a minute visiting my old friend, Renee, who had I had not seen for about eight years. Renee and I met through a homeschool website back in 1997 and discovered shortly after that we actually lived in the same town in British Columbia! The story got even better when we discovered that two of our older boys, my first and her fifth, were born on the same day in the same hospital in a completely different city! 

Talk about a God ordained friendship! That was when I knew that God could arrange relationships and that distance made no difference to Him. We have been good friends ever since. She went on to have a total of eight children, and who would know that I, too, would end up with eight! 

Fifteen years ago, in 1999, I moved to a tiny town in the country many hours away, and a few years after that, when my oldest was around fifteen, she moved across the country, and we hadn’t seen each other since then. 

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Beautiful Scenery

After a long day driving, with lunch on the road, we finally arrived. Before we got there though a few moments took place. One was when we were eating lunch as we drove. We had stopped at a rest area to make lunch, but not wanting to waste a minute we ate while we drove. As Courage opened the window to brush out the crumbs I said, “Courage, you shouldn’t do that...” In my mind’s eye I was thinking his plate might fly out of his hands. Why I didn’t say, “Don’t do that!” I don’t know. A split second after I said my words the plate broke away and he was left holding a fraction of it. Ooooppsss!! I said, “You better hope the people behind us didn’t see that!” I could envision an angry driver having litter flying at his car. And I don’t litter! It was rather humorous as he looked at me rather sheepishly.

 Courage With His Remaining Piece of Plate

When we were just an hour away from Renee’s house we fell across an accident and ending up sitting for twenty minutes or so. We finally had a chance to see what was going on when we were the last to make the turn into the gas station to go around the car in the ditch. Obviously something interesting had taken place as there were ghost cars, fire trucks, police cars, and many officers in the area, but only one car in the ditch with a broken in side. 

I snapped my picture just before we were instructed to drive through, and as I put my camera away, thinking I had been discreet, I drove past the officer in front and he smiled and said to me, “Did you get my good side?” And I just as boldly said to him, “I sure did!!” 

As I told the kids, if I was caught snapping the picture, I might as well look like there was no problem with it, rather than looking silly and red-faced. So bold worked well. ;)

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Arriving at Renee’s the kids, were pleased to see her out front with her wee little grand-daughter waiting for us. Her warm and friendly spirit flowed over as she gathered the kids into great big hugs of welcome. The children have been so incredibly excited waiting to finally visit this family. Renee’s husband is the one they have prayed for their entire lives. Some of them do not even remember meeting him, as they were very tiny when the family moved so far away. Therefore, this was a long-awaited and much-anticipated visit.

After a warm vat of chili which greeted us upon our arrival, we head off to visit the farm where Anna-Marie works. This was a high-light in our visit. Courage got in immediately with raking up manure and moving bales of hay for the horses. 

All the children got involved in brushing and feeding the beautiful horses that are stabled there. One horse was enormous at the size of 18+ hands!

When we arrived back from the barn Mr. B was still not home, so we sat around and visited drinking hot chocolate while we awaited his return from the hockey game. Israel could not have grinned bigger when he finally met the Legendary Mr. B!

A great end to a wonderful day!