Getting ready for our road trip

We are leaving on Friday night for Alabama to visit Jason's parents. Why Friday night, you ask? Well... we'll be driving. Yup! Jason has somehow convinced me that 15+ hours in a car with a 7 month old is going to be fun. That has yet to be determined. But, we're leaving on Friday around 8pm so that we can get the largest chunk of the trip out of the way while Piper sleeps.

And I'm just praying that she sleeps well in the car. She's been doing so great at home lately, going down at 7:30pm and not getting up until 6:30 or 7am. It has been pure bliss, 7-8 hours of uninterrupted sleep. But alas, that may come to an end after Friday night. We shall see.

So getting ready for this trip has been so much more complicated and stressful than any of our previous trips. First, and foremost, we have the young one to consider. And she has yet to learn the art of packing lightly. Then again, either has her mother. So we have to organize and pack all of Piper's things and figure out what we really need and what we could do without. Then there's packing our own stuff. And then there's somehow stuffing it all into our car. Thank god we have an SUV. And I guess this is another good reason we're not flying, because we'd be spending half of our salaries in extra baggage charges.

However, the one major difference I've noticed in getting ready for this trip is... In any of our previous trips we scrambled to clean, organize, pack, and get ready to go. But then we got to the airport and realized that even if we forgot something it's too late now. So we would sit at the bar, get a nice big drink, and let the excitement take over. But there's no pre-flight bar in this trip. There's no sipping wine before getting on a plane, where you'll just sip more wine until you land. No. There is just 15 (or more like 18 with stops and whatnot) hours of driving.

Here's hoping for a large (very large) glass of wine at the end of this trip. Or maybe champagne. Has champagne season started yet?