Getting Ready to Leave

Preparing for this trip was different from most trips I've been on, because I had to get ready for everything that would happen at home and on the trip.  Talk about a double migraine!

For a trip across the country with my dad, I had to arrange the travel and accommodations.  Shuttle to the airport or long term parking?  Airplane itineraries and costs.  Rental cars and hotel rooms.  There are so many things to do there!  Which ones look the most interesting and are the closest to where we will be?  Might as well see as much as we can on our short trip.  Or should we rest and relax more?  And what are we going to eat while we are gone?  Convenience food from the gas station, making sandwiches across a hotel bed, or eating out?  Oh yeah, mind the budget.  There were so many details to arrange and keep track of.

At the same time, I needed to arrange for everything on the home front.  I know that other people can do most of the things I take care of on a daily basis, but I also know that no one knows all the things I regularly keep track of unless I tell them.  So I made lists.  Scads of them, of course.

In the end, I had the sense to organize the travel things, just like my mother taught me, in one nice folder.  The reservations for hotels, airplanes and rental cars slipped neatly in one side, while the other side of the folder held maps and other information I would need.  Dad said she would be proud of me, and I hope to continue to learn from her.  Mom and Dad loved to go on trips, and
Mom spent many hours researching and finding good deals.  She was a planner extraordinaire.

On the home front, I didn't have to worry too much about who would take care of the small fry.  Trent ordinarily goes in to work at noon, and the high school boys get home in the early afternoon, so Trent arranged to come in to work a few hours late every day to cover that gap.  I was a little bit worried about how the boys would do in the evenings, but they are very responsible, so I'm sure they will do well.  I have four older boys, three little ones, and dinner.  On a rotating schedule, each boy takes care of a younger sibling, or makes dinner.  I froze casseroles, and markered cooking direction on each one, so dinner should be pretty easy.  Other things to coordinate were Chris's driver's ed schedule, Ben's last few days of his after-school job, and homework.  Big signs on the kitchen window reminded the kids how to go about making dinner (like starting an hour before dinner time) exactly what the babysitting detail required (yes, brush their teeth every night) and a list of how to clean the kitchen (we've been having some struggles on getting that job all the way done).

It was definitely more work to have to plan the week two times over.