Pre-Vacation Blues

There are several challenges in having children - one of the biggest I have discovered so far is traveling with them. On Friday the Erim clan is heading west to go skiing for a week and so here I am the week before having to pack.

We avoid air travel as much as possible. The first reason being now that Quinn is over two for us to even contemplate going anywhere by plane the price tag starts at $1,000 and only goes up from there. Ouch. Our second reason is, well you know, we love our dogs and so attempt to take them on most of our vacations which requires us to drive. We are the crazy people that would rather drive 14 hours through the night down to Palm Beach to board a plane to the Bahamas than take the 2 hour flight there from Nashville. The third reason is packing. When we drive anywhere I can always throw the extra diapers and an extra bag of toys into the car last minute and no one cares if we have overweight bags or 13 of them, for that matter. And finally, the biggest reason is the whole airline process itself. In driving we schlep the kids into the car in 5 minutes and load the bags and go - the process of getting to the airport of getting all of us and all our crap into the terminal, checked-in, through security and on to the plane without losing a child or a bag is daunting to say the least.

But since our dogs can't ski and since driving to Denver would take like 3 days each way we will be heading to the airport on Friday. Pray for us.

So here I sit procrastinating because the LAST thing I want to do is pack. I can pack myself in about 20 minutes - packing kids on the other hand takes preparation, thought and a whole lot of creativity. We are staying in CO for a week so I have got to pack enough toys to entertain them so they won't destroy a condo but said toys have to be small and compact enough to fit in an overhead bin. I have spent the afternoon inspecting all of our toys seeing if they fit the bill - compact, fun, not too many parts to lose so I am not spending my last day hunting for the lost puzzle piece instead of skiing. I have narrowed the list to the semi-finalists and tonight will have to play puzzle master to see how to get them all into the airline imposed baggage limits. Next I have to think of the plane ride. One of our other caveats in flying is attempting to fly at night (ie bedtime). That way the kids get on the plane, we put them in their jammies and they fall asleep and we then can enjoy the overpriced liquor. However, we couldn't get a night flight out so our 3 hour plane flight is going to be in prime play time. Our seatmates are going to love us!

To top this off I have to do all this packing by myself - Raif is on a business trip til thursday so I have no one to bounce my ideas off or help me sit on a suitcase to shut it. So if any of you have any great plane or packing ideas let me know and hopefully this will all be worth it once we get there.