Itinerary

When we got to my mother’s house today, Liv immediately shrieked to her “ I going on cation!!! I going on cation!!” Mind you, she has no idea what a vacation even is; we have not traveled save for an overnight trip to an indoor water park since before I was pregnant with her. I think she can sense the anticipation though. The big kids and I are all very excited. Hub is not so much excited. Vacation is more stressful than enjoyable for him. He likes to be near home. He likes routine. He DOES NOT like to spend a lot of money. But he knows that I crave being away, that I need to go away every now and again, and so he complies.

We’re still kind of planning out our itinerary for next week. And because I am working through Friday, and spending Saturday shopping a HUGE consignment sale and also (hopefully) using my 30% off Old Navy coupon on some good clearance, it’s going to leave Sunday to get the house in order and get packed. We aren’t leaving for the actual vacation until Tuesday (very early Tuesday Morning), but we’ve had a daytrip to the beach in the works for a while on Monday, and it’s not going to leave a lot of time for packing. So, Sunday. Packing everything but the things we need up until we leave. And the cleaning….

Do you guys do that too? Obsess over the house being clean before you leave? I like our house to be spotless. I loathe coming home from vacation with anything more than unpacking hanging over my head, so I always work really hard to have it vacuumed, decluttered, and ready to just come home to before we leave.

This of course means a lot of pre-vacation stress for me. I am so much like my mother in this respect that it kind of scares me. If we were going somewhere, she would be up the entire night before preparing. Stressed beyond belief with list on top of list. So now you know where my list making neurosis comes from. It works though, and I always have every aspect of our vacation planned in advance. We are not “show up to vacation destination and see what happens” types of people. We are not “go on vacation just to sit on the beach” people either (though I could probably be persuaded to be that person at this point in my life). We are “get out and see and experience EVERYTHING” people. We like to be moving and seeing things during the day, and after dinner spend some time in the hotel pool, or maybe watch a movie in our room.

I’m in the tie up loose ends and start my pre-list lists phase today. By end of day tomorrow I will have full lists of what to pack and for who, what we need to buy, to do items before we leave, and a checklist of things we cannot leave the house without morning of. Anyway, it’s a miracle that I haven’t incorporated flow charts at this point. Still just the hand written lists.

So yes, next week! Vacation! Can’t wait!