Heading out on vacation!

Yep, we are heading out on a 5 day vacation, and we can’t wait.  Ok, so we are only driving about 1 1/2 hours away, to my parents house.  BUT we will be staying there for 5 days, so we are counting this as our vacation!  😀

As I wrote about before, it’s my dad’s 90th birthday this Monday, and my 45th birthday this Tuesday.  Dad had me late in life.  😉  My brother is coming out with is wife and sons, one of my cousins will be there, and a son from another cousin (2nd cousin maybe?).  Plus, us, my parents, my sister and her kids.  There should be 12 adults and 3 children, if I counted right.  😉  Paul and I will be staying in my parents camper, the kids sleeping in my parents house and possibly some other family members.  And some will be staying at the local motel.

We are really looking forward to a relaxing time out there.  We’ll get there Sunday night, and won’t leave until Friday.  It will be a nice time with family.  While we are there we’ll have my dad’s party, probably do some shooting, maybe fishing.  Seeing some friends, and overall just enjoying time with everyone.

This is the first time we have traveled since going gluten free, so it will be interesting.  The most interesting part is having enough room in our car for our luggage and the cooler of food.  😀  Most of the meals that will be made we should be able to eat, at least a portion of it.  But we are bringing our own food too, so we don’t put any pressure on family members to cook a certain way.  It’s been kind of fun picking out the things to bring.  I will pre-cook most of it tomorrow, before we leave.  That way it’s mainly warming things up while we are out there.  Though I will make a baked pasta dish for everyone on Monday.  That should be fun.  I’ve only made a few gluten free meals for other people, so I’m always a little nervous.  But I think my family will like it.

The funniest part of all of this is, my sister was in charge of decorations.  So she comes out here by us, buys two huge balloons, a ‘9’ and a ‘0’.  With her daughter-in-law and 2 grandkids in her truck there is no way for her to get the balloons back home with over an hour drive.  So she stops by my house and asks if we can bring them out with us tomorrow.  I say, sure, no problem, without really thinking or looking at the size of the balloons.  What can I say, I was walking out the door when she stopped by and wasn’t really paying attention.  🙂  We only have a Jeep Cherokee and the back part isn’t all that big.  With our luggage and now the big cooler we have to bring I’m not sure how we will get the balloons in there.  I know, sounds funny right?  It’s ‘only‘ two balloons.  Yeah, look how big these balloons are!

Goodness they half my kids height.

I always think of packing up a vehicle as a puzzle.  You fit the most in when you fit the ‘pieces’ just right.  Getting all of our things in there and those balloons is going the be the hardest packing puzzle I’ve ever done.  I’ll take pictures once its all packed up.  Hopefully I won’t pop the balloons in the process.  😀