Ginny is almost a year old now so, needless to say, I need a vacation. Gone are the days of young married life when my husband and I could throw a few sets of clothes in a bag and dash off for the weekend. However, we did finally get the chance to go on a real first family vacation to our favorite mountain lake last week.
It's a good thing you get to rest while you're on vacation, because after packing for three people for a week--I was close to losing my mind. How on earth could one tiny person need so much stuff for one week?? Now I know why, when I was a child, our '89 light blue dodge caravan was always stuffed completely full with six people and their entire lives in bags. The back end of the van, nearly touching the ground, proved to be just the right tool for removing stumps in the driveway at our mountain cabin. While my brothers liked to "rough-it" with their sleeping bags and probably one set of "camo" for the week, the rest of us packed up our rooms and brought them to the lake. I recall one year when I literally sat with my knees around my head. But with my knees so close to my ears I was able to easily block out the sound of my older sister singing along with R. Kelly's "I Believe I Can Fly" on repeat for 4 solid hours. That was a long trip.
Facing packing only three people for a week still seemed a little daunting. So I created a spreadsheet with each family member and all the hundreds of things we needed to bring. Yes I created the spreadsheet in excel and then uploaded it to google docs for ease in sharing. Yes I am a dork. We spent a day and a half packing up everything we owned and loaded it all into our moderately sized sedan. We even noticed how much cleaner our apartment looked with all the crap out of it. (Thoughts of leaving all our belongings on the interstate crossed my mind.) So after eating a lunch of whatever the heck was still in the fridge, we were off on our first family vacation.
The car trip was supposed to be about 4 and 1/2 hours. (So said our brand-new Garmin who we named James because he sounds exactly like James May from "Top Gear") We were not looking forward to that length of time in a car with a less than 1 year old, but we had high hopes. (We're new parents after all...) Ginny ended up only sleeping for an hour of the trip and began shrieking after about 3 hours. What a great way to begin a vacation! So relaxing! I moved into the back seat with Ginny in order to keep her entertained for the last hour and half to two hours. She kept herself amused by playing with my cell phone and reading the brochure that came with my motion-sickness wrist bands.
Finally. As the sun was sinking below the mountains, we arrived at the lake. A sense of peace and relaxation immediately came over us. The sun danced and glittered on the lake. A flock of birds flitted over the water. Ah...vacation. We opened the windows and sniffed deeply that clean, crisp mountain air. And then, from beside me: "HERRK!!!" Oh no. I looked over to see Ginny spewing forth like a geyser. This was no cute baby spit-up. This was "I'm-a-big-girl-now" honest to goodness barf. We pulled over at the side of the lake and I got Ginny out of her carseat and dangled her over the guardrail to finish her expelling. (I will never look at peaches the same way.) Cars passed, no doubt trying to see the beautiful scenery, but saw two newbie parents holding out their now naked baby herking at the side of the road. We gave Ginny a baby wipe bath there on the side of the highway as the sun slid further behind the mountains. Vacation had begun.
