Long Drives and Children...

This weekend we had to travel from Ottawa, Ontario to Hamilton, Ontario (please note, for those of you not from Canada, that Ottawa and Hamilton are located in the same province-you will understand why in a few moments) to attend a funeral.

Usually, the trip from Ottawa to Hamilton can be made in approximately 5 1/2 hours, slightly more or less time depending on how the driver is feeling on that particular day.

It took us eight hours.

Now, to be fair, the weather was not the greatest for driving...pouring rain started about 45 minutes or so into the drive, and did not stop until well after we had landed in Hamilton. And for some reason, the harder the rain came down, the faster (and stupider-is stupider a word? It is now...) the other drivers went. Do trucks really need to be passing each other doing over 120 km an hour in rain so thick you can barely see them? Really?

Weather aside, there were four children trapped in the van with us. Three of those children were happy to be out of school for at least an extra day. Avery was most definitely not happy about missing her chance to count to 100 in french in front of her class. Ian was not happy to have to share the back seat with his younger brother. Emma was not happy to be awake before noon. Jamie was not happy to have to sit still for longer than five minutes. And Brian and I were not happy that we had to listen to the four of them complain. A lot. And answer numerous questions about whether Hamilton was in Canada too, just like Ottawa (as previously mentioned, it is).

By Saturday morning, the weather had cleared. It was cold, but at least the rain had stopped. We went to the funeral in the morning, where I'm proud to say that my children were on their best behavior. They seemed to actually get the gravity of the situation, even if they did not fully understand why we were at the funeral. Later, we joined the rest of Brian's family as they gathered together to remember Barry and share a few laughs and tears over things he had said and done during his life.

There was a buffet and a large number of people in one room, where my boys, after having proved they could be quiet, decided the time had come shake things up a little bit. They weren't really that bad, but I felt that trying to strangle one another and yelling, "I'm going to kill you!" just after a funeral was a tad inappropriate.

Brian gave his father and stepmum a ride home, and since they had very generously (or foolishly, depending on how you look at things) offered to look after the kids for us for a bit, the four lovely Lilley children left with Daddy, Grandda and Granny to give Mama a bit of breathing room.

Now for those of you who don't know, Hamilton is situated on Lake Ontario. While Lake Ontario is the second smallest of the five great lakes in North America, it is still a very big body of water. Coming down the mountain in Hamilton, the sun was shining, making the lake look very blue. My children (who have seen Lake Ontario more than a few times), all exclaimed excitedly, and loudly, "Look, Daddy! I see the ocean!"

Brian tried several times to explain that what they were looking at was not the ocean, but in fact just a lake, a big one, yes, but a lake nonetheless.

They refused to believe him.

On Sunday as we were leaving Hamilton, Jamie excitedly told me again that he could see the ocean. As I told him that it was not an ocean, it was a lake, he told me, quite adamantly that it was not a lake, it was an ocean. Avery joined in the conversation, claiming she could see Ottawa from where she was (the same Ottawa that was/is a minimum of 5 hours away and much further north)...

As we drove from Hamilton towards Toronto, Brian pointed out the CN Tower, standing strong and proud on the horizon. Jamie asked me how I had managed to drive so fast back to Canada. And no matter how many times we told him otherwise, he just couldn't seem to get that we had never once left Canada.

Either he doesn't believe we would tell him the truth, or his teachers are in for a big shock when they try to teach him geography in a few years...