Week 11 - Expertise

Seven days and counting to our family vacation, time to get to work.  The trip and reservations had been set and planned several months ahead, and left to sit quietly until now.  Our family, my husband, myself, and our four children are driving to Tennessee to visit with my mother for a week.
The lists begin, lists are as essential to me as breathing when planning a trip with our family.  Lists for the trip itself, we are driving fourteen hundred miles with two adults and four children in one vehicle.  Lists for the vacation itself, when we arrive in the mountains of Tennessee and our rented cabin.  And of course, the list for the trip home.  All of the lists are placed in the folder that will reside safely next to my co-pilot seat, along with the reservation confirmation paperwork, the registration and insurance information for the van, and an extensive list of phone numbers on the off chance a cell phone is lost along the way.

Packing begins.  Confidently, with extensive list in hand, I begin by tackling each of the kids dressers one at a time.  Carefully selecting only the choicest articles of clothing, ones that are comfortable for wearing in the car, are presentable enough to wear if we go to a nice restaurant for dinner, and will be warm enough/cool enough depending on the weather.  All goes into the quickly filling laundry basket.  Once the preliminary selections are finished, I pull out the kids backpacks and empty them of the residual school papers and broken pencils.  Checking off each item on the list as I pack, each backpack fills with the required number of socks, shorts, tshirts, and underwear.  Allowing each of the kids to have their clothes packed in their own backpack allows for easy packing and unpacking, but also allows easy access while we are traveling.  One bag for all of the extra shoes and sandals to keep any dirt, mud, or residual shoe smell safely away from the clothes.  The final backpack for all of the bathroom items that we are bringing, shampoo, contact lens solution, toothpaste, deodorant, etc - all safe in one place should anything leak.  The last to be packed, the only suitcase, would hold hubby's and my own clothes.  It also held the precautionary mattress cover for my son's occasional nighttime accidents, extra socks (which seem to disappear away from home much faster than they do at home), and any other incidentals that didn't fit in any of the other backpack's categories. 

With all of the items on my list checked and accounted for, I pulled out my tried and true LL Bean bag.  It's one of the bigger ones, but it was the perfect size to fit between the front seats under the slide-out cup holders.  This is what my hubby calls the Doomsday Bag, because if we lose it, we are doomed.  These are the basic essentials required to go any length of time with my children  in any vehicle.  In this bag goes a handful or two of pencils, a couple sharpeners, individual book lights for each of them to read (eternally optimistic), extra rechargeable batteries and the charger, every charger cord for the various electronics we are taking, and individual mini packs of M&M's and mini candy bars (never underestimate the power of chocolate as persuasion).  Topping all of this off is a gallon zip lock bag of the various medications that my son takes, the few my husband will need if his gout attacks, cough drops, antacids (my oldest son nearly killed us all after a bad BBQ sandwich last year), Nyquil, melatonin, and 3 large bottles of Advil.  Carefully placing the red striped bag near the now-assembled pile of backpacks, There is one last item on my agenda.  I grab throw five throw pillows from the couch (I always knew they were good for something) and open the blanket chest for five of the fleece throws I made last year. 

I call for all of the troops and explain that nothing, Nothing, was to be added, taken out, or messed with in any way unless I okayed it.  They all look at me with acceptance, knowing from past experiences the frantic animal I become if someone alters my perfected form of over-organization.  I point to the empty laundry basket next to the pile and tell them that if there is something else that they want or have to take, it should go in there, and we would see if there was space when it came time to pack up.  I knew that it would be overflowing by the time we left, and most would find it's way into the space left in my suitcase.  I gaze at the pile periodically throughout the time left before we leave, mentally reviewing if we had enough socks, or if I had forgotten anything vitally important; picturing in my mind how it should be stacked and packed in the van so that there would still be enough room for all of the kids.  My job for vacation is the provisioning and packing, to make sure we get there with all bits and pieces intact, and then I am on vacation.  At least until it's time to pack up again to come home.