Vay-Kay-Sean!

Our vacation is coming up. 15 days. We haven't taken a vacation since September of 2007. This will be our FIRST family vacation with KIDS. Chris picked out Colorado.

dun dun dunnnnn

A 12 hour road trip out to the middle of nowhere (but there are mountains, Rylee.) with 3 small children and a dog. There are BEARS in Colorado!

Chris - "We can go hiking!"

Me - "There are bears in the woods!"

Chris - "That's why you tie bells to your gear."

Me - "Oh good. So like ::RING RING:: Dinner walking! Come and geeeeeet it!"

I would have picked somewhere with a beach. Yes. I'm serious. A person with a phobia of fish can still enjoy the beach. Which I'm pretty sure by definition is the LAND that touches the water. You don't have to get IN the water and a shark has never chewed someone's leg off on land. Just saying.

Palm trees, warm sand, margaritas... yes ma'am! I am so picking the next place we go.

This is why night owls don't hatch early birds.

How do people just switch off and sleep? I don't understand how you can will yourself to unconsciousness. It must be relatively easy. We expect our babies to master this skill and here I am practically elderly in my twenties and can't figure it out. For my eyes to close, one of two things has to happen. 1- the sun has to rise or 2- I have to iterally collapse from exhaustion. That either makes me a vampire (there was that terribly unfortunate incident with the glitter. Glitter is like the herpes of craft supplies. It's. Forever.) or I'm battery operated. Either way.

Maybe this is okay. My kids are becoming terribly inventive. There were only so many ways to wake the practically dead. Now my youngest shouts out, "Hi! Hugs!" from her crib and what zombie mother ISN'T going to come running lest she miss out on one of the only freely given hugs of the day. Priorities, you know. I wonder how this will translate on her climb up the corporate ladder. "Hugs? Hug anyone?" Don't mind if I do.

I'm out of the "baby" stage. It's becoming abundantly clear since, you know, BABIES don't speak in sentences. It's really my own laziness to blame for our youngest still sleeping in a crib. I mean who wants to take the whole thing apart and put a toddler bed together?! All my kids sleep through the night (95% of the time anyway) and they even entertain themselves for a reasonable amount of time when they wake up at the stinkin crack o' dawn. I should be sleeping! That's my trophy for changing diapers for 5 and a half straight years! For getting up and feeding a baby every 2 hours for the entirety of my early twenties. But am I snoozing? No. Am I rested (like every other mother of 3 kids 5 and under clearly is... ::chuckle::) No. And it doesn't look to be solving itself any time soon.