Vacation!

Ah, June! How we have been looking forward to you! South Carolina with the kiddos and my family from the 6th-14th, home for a week and then to our 10th anniversary celebration in the Adirondacks with just Jeff on June 21st...that's right...JUST US TWO. The last time we did this we ended up with Lily 9 months later. ;) We're trouble, just the two of us. Ah, July! How you will surely depress us when you come and all this good stuff is behind us.

BUT...

The packing! Oh dear God, the packing! I need somewhere to "stage" all of the crap that we are bringing. I can't possibly pull it all together the night before. And yet...there is no where to stage it all. Our upstairs is so small that there is literally room for one suitcase to sit out...that's it. No room for the boxes and boxes of CR-AP that we are bringing. I tried getting a box together in the living room and Michael unloaded it once, Lily once, and Andrew was rifling through it to see what we were bringing. Downstairs staging is officially not an option. ;) Life vests, bikes, bike carriers, clothes, food, games, toys, stuff for the 13 hour car trip, stuff for the house that we are staying in, etc etc. Right now it is getting piled vertically in our closet. Clothes are being sorted into laundry baskets until the night before when I can bring the suitcases out of storage and fill up. I have to be careful to only launder the dirty clothes... :) I discovered that Andrew only owns 5 pairs of shorts that fit, so off we went to buy him an emergency supply of clothes. Michael was up crying last night and has been generally -meh- the last couple of days. No symptoms of anything, but I'm watching him like a hawk. Please don't blossom into a full blown illness on the way down to the beach. Andrew is ready to hang himself because of all the fun stuff we are packing up that he is not allowed to get into. I thought he was going to cry yesterday when I said for the 1000th time, "Not until vacation. That is for vacation." You can't say the word "beach" or imply anything about Memere and Pepere in front of Lily, because she instantly goes to the front door and says she's ready to go. And then has a MONSTER tantrum when you try and explain that we aren't going to the beach until the end of the week...we're just packing for it. And the car. Oh...that is my challenge for today. I am prepared to empty 6 garbage bags of trash and cookie crumbs and old school papers I've probably been looking for and receipts and winter clothes and sticky empty juice boxes. I won't be shocked if I find our 4th child gestating in all that crap. As I envision cleaning it out, I think it may be better just to ram it into a tree today and buy a new car. ;)

So...I should get off this dumb computer and get started. I can't wait can't wait can't wait to get there. If only Star Trek were real and we could transport ourselves and our stuff directly there. But every year we go, we say over and over, "This is so worth it." So bring it on!