Packing for Spring Break

I've known all week that we are pulling out first thing tomorrow morning for a 10-12 hour drive home to my parent's house in Pennsylvania.  The boys have been counting down every day for the past two weeks, so you would think the countdown would have motivated me to get my packing done early.  No chance of that.

Caleb is barefoot and has his sunglasses, clearly he's ready for a Spring Break roadtrip.

I've always been a bit of a procrastinator and that hasn't changed (yet). In random order, here is a list of the things that I've kept myself busy with this week and today instead of just packing the actual suitcases.

On Monday I bought a candy/deep fry thermometer because I've been failing at making toffee (I don't want to even admit how many batches I ruined).  I immediately used the thermometer to make a delicious batch of dark chocolate toffee with sea salt.

Then I thought to myself, "I have this thermometer now, I can finally make donuts."  So, Tuesday afternoon was spent making a double batch of the Pioneer Woman's recipe for donuts with Aaron.  The donuts were Ah-mazing.

I also decided that I should fill up my social calendar this week because who needs their days and nights free to pack?  I hosted a playdate, went out for a girls' night, had a date night with Jon and had some new friends over for coffee all in a three day time span.

Next I figured that in order to pack, I should have every, single item of clothing in the house clean so I don't have to worry if the right things are clean.  This meant about a thousand loads of laundry (okay, maybe just 10, but it felt like a thousand).  I'm still waiting for the last one to dry as I write this.

Then I figured its silly to pack a car if its dirty on the inside.  Yesterday I paid James fifty cents to pick up all the trash he could find and bring in all the random junk in the car (gloves, sunglasses, etc).  Today I spent a good hour vacuuming our car (moving the booster seats, folding our seats flat).  I was amazed and disgusted at the food bits that were in our car, but now its sparkly clean (well, as clean as my non-industrial vacuum can get it) and ready for a long car drive where I'm going to let four small children eat and drink in the car completely undoing my cleaning job.  I realize its sorta pointless, but I can't stop myself.

And if the inside of the car is clean, the outside should be too?  Right?!?  So, I found myself at the car wash after school pickup today.

In between all these essential tasks, I have managed to pack the kids suitcases and load the dining room table with random things we need to take (baby gear for my nephew, snacks for the car, the electronic must haves and chargers).  And I have a big pile of my clothes on my bed as I'm still deciding what to take.  Most likely at 11 tonight when the rest of the stuff is loaded up, I will just start haphazardly throwing clothes into my suitcase and hope for the best when I arrive in PA.

I need to wrap up this blog (my latest procrastination trick) so that I can get to the airport and pick up my dad.  On a side note, I have the best dad EVER.  He worked his normal friday and then got on an airplane and is flying to Chicago.  He lands at 7 pm tonight.  He is flying here for the sole purpose of helping me drive home to his house tomorrow with my boys since Jon can't come with us until later in the week.  Now that's love folks.  Most people would go running the opposite direction when asked to do a long roadtrip with four small children, but my dad will willingly fly out here to be a part of it.  

I'm thinking since he's helping us out so much we should probably stop for a long, leisurely dinner on our way home from the airport.  I mean, the packing can wait.  We aren't leaving for a good 15 hours.