Is This Canada?

Christopher's first question when we got off the plane was, "Is this Canada?" I guess after almost 24 hours of airports, one looks the same as another and it's not easy to identify where you are anymore. Stephen saw a Canadian flag and went crazy, shouting so loudly that he could see the flag of Canada that all the other people standing in the line for customs were grinning at him. Yes, we are home in Canada and are slowly but surely getting reaquainted with our surroundings.

Thank God, for the most part our trip home was uneventful! We were a bit anxious in the airport in Asuncion because all the computers were down and the staff was doing their best to manually fill out all the forms, boarding passes, luggage tags, etc. Our flight was scheduled to leave at 11:00AM and we were told we would start to board at 10:20. The TAM Airlines attendant was telling us this AT 10:20! We still wanted to pray with Oscar and Karen before they left and we went through security. We needn't have worried. By the time we finally got to the gate at 10:45, there was no one there and we still had to wait about another hour until we finally left.

When Fred was checking us all in at the airport in Asuncion, the attendant asked Fred if he was aware of the fact that my landed immigrant papers for Canada were expired! Can you believe they expired in March and I didn't even catch that! I knew my passport was ok, but I never thought to check my immigrant paperwork! No one caught it on the way down, so I just tucked that card away in my wallet and used only my VALID passport for the rest of the trip. No problems! Thank God!

Our flight got in to Toronto nice and early at 5:30AM. It took us about an hour to get through customs, luggage gathering, etc. Plus, with three little guys, it took us probably twice as long as everyone to get off the plane, walk from our gate to customs, find our bags, and all that. We always seemed to be at the end of lines, but that's ok. The boys were so tired at that point that most of the time they were laying on the floor crying while we waited our turn in the lines, so it was ok that there were only other families in the same boat, or smiling (probably deaf) grandparents in wheelchairs around us. The boys all fell asleep on the ride home, too, so I know they were exhausted. We all took long naps this afternoon, and none of them complained tonight when they got in bed either. Poor Stephen is all confused about what day it is. He couldn't understand how it could be May 15 at the supper table tonight when it was May 15 when we got to the airport. He couldn't understand why we had to eat two breakfasts yesterday - one with heart waffles at Aunt Karen's and then one on the plane (20 hours later). He keeps checking the calendar and the clock to try to figure out what really happened. Poor guy.

So here we are, safe and sound and exhausted. Christopher got into our van in Toronto and asked, "Is this OUR van?" And then when we said we were going home, he asked if our house had toys. Stephen assured him that it did. When we got home, the boys wanted to play outside and Christopher was about to step out onto the deck when he came back in and asked me if it was snowing outside and could he shovel. That was his last memory of being out on our deck, I guess!

Thank you all for your prayers for our family this past month. It was an amazing experience for our family. I hope that some day we will be able to go back and do some more work, but I think I'd like to wait until the boys are older. It was harder on me to deal with three little kids, in the airports especially, than I thought, so I would rather wait until they're older and can handle themselves better. They still loved it, too, and all day today we talked about Paraguay ... Aunt Karen's house, Sasha the dog (I didn't talk about Sasha, but the boys did!), the school, Edson, Uncle Oscar's birthday today, La Quinta, Gaby's hair cut, empanadas, mosquitoes, etc. We will miss a lot of things from last month in Paraguay! Thank God for the memories, the pictures, the gifts and the blessings of growth!