Traveling Frenzy

Am I the only mom out there who can’t seem to understand why we go on vacation?  It seems so stressful.  Before we leave we wash laundry, wash the car, vacuum the car, vacuum the house, pack the kids clothes, pack our own clothes, pack the medicines, pack the emergency medicines, pack some toys, pack the DVD’s, and don’t forget the DVD player!  That’s only part of my list….I could go on and on.  I haven't mentioned the two pack and plays...or even the wagon that seats two!  I’ve gotten to where I keep an Excel sheet with all the things we need…and I have four “worksheet” in my “workbook”.  If your familiar with Excel you know what I mean, if not there are tabs at the bottom that allow you to have as many sheets as you want in one file.  In our “travel sheet”, I have one for our Wisconsin vacation, one for short trips (2 or 3 days) , and one for our Baltimore trips.

We just got back from Baltimore.  It was a 14 hour drive, that we split into two days.  But we were gone for over a week…first we spent a few days in St. Louis with the grandparents and went to the zoo…then we came home for about 36 hours and then left again for Baltimore…left on a Monday…came back on a Sunday.  Anyway…there was so much “stress” on what to remember to pack…and packing what we could ahead so that when the kids got up the following day we could leave as fast as possible. 

I spent so much time just getting ready to pack by doing laundry…not once…but twice.  Then I spent 3 hours cleaning our van from top to bottom.  Booking hotels…and confirming them….getting books from the library so I have something to read in the car…it seemed to never end.  There was a sigh of relief when we were all packed and on our way finally.

Then we make it through the week and we finally make it HOME!  Aaahhh…home sweet home!  Only…when you get home you can’t just walk in and collapse on the couch…no you have to unload the car, sort through all the stuff and put things away….do laundry….and more laundry….and yet more laundry.  Then….you have to clean the car or in our case our van once again…although this time I didn’t spend 3 hours…just an hour or so vacuuming it out well.  Since the drive was so long we fed the kids on trays attached to their seats and we drove down the road…the result was lots of crackers, teddy grahams…and some chicken and even some hotdog and ketchup (the result of our baby girl deciding to throw her ketchup covered corn dog all over the place).

So when it is all said and done, I sit back and wonder…is a vacation really a vacation?  It feels like so much work…at least with young kids.  I can only hope it gets better as they are older…and for us as Luke becomes stronger and more independent.

Can you see how full our van was?  We even had two coolers...one between the middle seats and one between the driver and passenger seat!  Good thing we had the "stow-and-go" option on our van...or else I'm not sure we would be able to see out the back!