The start of a long weekend

We are kicking off a 10-day weekend here at our house. Steve got his leave approved and we are headed south to see my sister grah-jee-ate high school. Then we are going to sweat our pale butts off at the beach where we hope to get some semblance of a tan. Well, I hope for that. Steve probably hopes to turn a new shade of pink and I hope to keep Sam as white as ever. (SWEET BABY SKIN!) We'll see how successful I am with all of that.

In preparation for our first travels with an infant who now sleeps through the night (on his back! in a crib! by himself!) and eats solid foods (they're only solid in the sense that you can't squeeze them out of a bottle nipple), we are literally taking half of our house with us.

We are debating a U-Haul rental at this point.

I have organized, bagged, and sorted his food for each day that we are on vacation, labeling EVERYTHING in case someone else happens to be feeding him (also, I think I might have a touch of the Oh-See-Dee).. I am also putting outfits into bags (INDIVIDUAL bags, mind you) so I am not doing that thing where I'm leaning over his bag digging through 14,000 identical-looking onesies and cursing loudly about how I can't find the OTHER BLUE SOCK DAMMIT I KNOW I PACKED IT.
We will also be bringing the Bumbo, eight different types of diapers for every occasion, baby water for the beach, a stroller, the jumperoo (because, goodness GRACIOUS, I wouldn't dream of depriving those chubby little legs their bouncing time for seven straight days), and the pack-n-play. Oh yeah, and the dogs. Ha! I came close to forgetting about them altogether, but luckily I had the presence of mind to remember that we're driving through Auburn on our way down and we can drop them off at our old vet for boarding. ($9 a night, people. Can I get an Amen?) So we won't have to deal with them on vacation and I'll know that they're enjoying their time running through familiar fields and playing with other dogs and sniffing butts and crotches and eating Good Dog Food and sleeping with each other at night like they do here. So, whew.

I know that sounds like a lot to take and some of it is probably unnecessary, but I don't get to spend a whole lot of time with my family these days, and when I have the opportunity, I like to fully enjoy it. So I will do the OCD packing and planning now instead of dealing with any type of chaos later.

I just really hope it will all fit into our car.

And I hope we don't get to Auburn and realize that we left the dogs at home.

Just chillin' with his giant zebra friend after a massive diaper explosion that soaked onesies and bumbos in the greater Fort Campbell area.