Finally got a chance to update everyone on the parents 50th anniversary weekend. To say the least we had our challenges in the transportation side of things. Lets step back....

This event has been on the calender for 2 years now as the only really important thing for my mom was having all the family home to get a family portrait done. So for 2 years I have been telling my kids, and Suzanne her's that it doesnt matter what is going on in your life you will be home for the weekend. This is no small challenge as the kids are spread from Calgary to London to Kingston.

So the arrival starts with my daughter coming in from Calgary Thursday night around 1am (Friday morning I guess) and the flight being on time but we had to wait for luggage for over an hour! We get home about 3:30 am. luckily we didn't have anything planned for Friday so we slept in.

Friday around noon I get a call from my middle boy to tell me he had an accident with the car. Nobody hurt, no other car involved, ends up the car was drivable (sorta) and he finished his day at work and came home at 4pm at which time it didn't take me long to realize that this car was heading to the repair shop right now. Luckily our insurance covers a rental car because we had to have 2 cars this weekend of all weekends!

We called in the claim made it to the rental shop and got the car. This was all good because the kids were to go in TO to have dinner with their mom's family and Cory was to drive them in. Ryan was coming into TO directly from London and going to be picked up at the subway. He too was late apparently.

Cory's girlfriend currently lives in the states and was coming in for the family event by bus and Cory was to pick her up at the bus station at 9 ish. While her travel plans got all screwed up and she didn't make it TO till midnightish...more on that later.

Cory went to take the car to pick her up and drive everyone home only to find the rental car deader than a doorknob. No booster cables around so a call to the rental roadside number was made and to make a long story short it was 2 am before a tow truck got there, only yo find that there was something serious wrong and the car had to be towed to the dealer.

Oh yea by this time Cory's girlfriend had to take a Cab to the Grandma's place. I hopped in the car and went to pick up Cory and Gina. The rest of the gang had been driven to my place earlier by their Uncle. Thanks Uncle Bryan! Another 3am night!

Saturday morning its a call to the rental place to get arrangements for another car. Lord only knows when I will get that picked up as we have hair appointments, kids have to shop because obviously 6 months of telling what they needed to ware for the family pictures wasn't enough lead time! Pictures are at 3 north of Whitby. We do manage to pick up the rental car get everywhere we needed to be and arrive at the pictures a few minutes early completely composed and my parents being none the wiser to the events of the last couple of days (although they eventually got filled in). The pictures went well, the drop in event we had the Sunday for my parents also went well and the weather could not have been better. My sister and my lovely bride took on most of the planning work and it was a great day for my parents.

Oh yea Cory's girlfriend had another late night getting home, buses sold out etc and not even leaving TO till 1am. Just the next event on the travel challenged weekend.

Monday Jen leaves to go back to Calgary and as is her nature she leaves packing till the last minute (dont know where she gets that from). She discovers she cant find her passport. We tear the house apart to no avail and she doesn't have any other gov't issued ID so this could be tricky getting on the plane. Long story short ends up she left the passport on the plan on the way down which I was unable to get confirmation on until after Jen was in the air. Perfect ending to a perfect storm when it comes to the transportation!

Life goes on .... good thing was the trip out to see Jen in the provincials yesterday was uneventful... other than no entertainment on the plane. No movies, no radio. The plane was not even equipped with it!