Thursday, July 5 Border Crossing

Today we went across the famous Rainbow Bridge which replaced the Honeymoon bridge after it fell from ice pressure in 1938.  One of 4 bridges which crosses the Niagara River on the border, this one is closest to the Falls.  We began to see quite a bit of back-up of traffic going over to the US and then there was a sign which simply stated:  Back to the US.  In other words, last chance to turn around or you go through customs.  There was a short line up of vehicles but otherwise not a long wait.  As it turned out, we didn't have any wait but had to get out of our vehicle.  We knew that the later you go across the longer the wait; it can be up to 2 hours at times, therefore we went across by 9 am.  The gal directing traffic must have thought we were a commercial or tour bus andf directed us to the left instead of to the right with all the other passenger cars.  It didn't matter what we said, so we gave up and went left.  As it turns out we had an entertaining visit with border patrol. 

 Paying a toll to cross into Canada

The back up going back to the US

When we stopped they came out of the building and asked us all the questions such as:  "Where are you going?  Why are you here?  How long will you be here?  Where are you from?  Do you have any alcohol or tobacco on board?  Do you have any firearms or weapons?  (At the last question, the boys all shouted "yes" and of course we said "no" and she looked quite confused.  We explained and thankfully did not have to dig out of the "deep pack" 4 very real-looking long toy rifles.)  Then she asked us all to get out of the car.  In we troop with our birth certificates, passports, and all these children.  No one else was in there but us so we had a small audience of 3 agents.  Then the questions began.  Are they all yours?  How far apart are they?  How old are they?  Are you Catholic?  What do you do for a living?  One man specifically asked me that question and I gestured towards the children and replied, "This".  He looked at me blankly and I said, "I could tell you everything I do, but we'll be here all day talking about it."  He then told me he had 5 children, the oldest is 9.  I found it quite amusing that they asked questions about their ages while looking at their birth certificates.  One smart gal finally caught on and exclaimed, "OOh, these were born on Leap Day."  So then we had to explain words like: "spontaneous and natural delivery".  After they found out just how rare these 3 children are and that they are splashed all over the internet which I'm sure he investigated after we left, he declared we needed to be a TV show.  Oh, yeah, right, I thought, lovely...  They finally let us and our children, who incidentally are now called:  Bryan, Sarah, Samuel, Elizabeth, Andrew, Jackson, and Katharine go on our merry way.  Just as we walked out, a huge tour bus pulls up and everyone starts getting off, thank goodness we came before that.
So that's our easy breezy border patrol experience.  Oh, and JB and I both somehow in the rush to leave town forgot to sign our passports which we did promptly in front of 3 laughing agents.