Our First Day on the Road (and What We Actually Packed)

We did it! We made it out on the road, just a half-hour later than we had planned to leave. Not too bad, all things considered. Packing the car was . . . challenging. 

Here's what we had to work with:

And here's what it looked like once we had everything packed.

Well, almost. The camping lantern got tucked into that bottom right corner.

Borrowing from my last post, here's how it all actually broke down in reality:

CARTOP CARRIER:

- Tent

- 5 self-inflating sleep mats

- 5 sleeping bags

- Beach umbrella

- 2 lawn chairs

- A couple of pillows

- Towels

BACK OF CAR:

- Crate 1: My clothes

- Crate 2: Havarti's clothes

- Crate 3: The Muse's clothes

- Crate 4: Dolittle's clothes

- Crate 5: BoyWonder's clothes (plus extra shoes)

- Crate 6: School stuff: curriculum, books, paper

- Crate 7: School stuff: games, legos, plastic animals, modeling clay, etc.

- Crate 8: Bathroom stuff

- Crate 9: Miscellaneous: Coffee grinder, French press (gotta have my coffee), Brita pitcher and filters, various spice cabinet basics, Wii (we debated this one, but it doesn't take up much space and BoyWonder loves it so so much), vitamins/supplements, laundry soap, and a few other random things

- Crate 10: Cooler (not really a crate, but the same size slightly larger, making it BARELY fit while still being able to close the trunk) for transporting leftover food place to place

Also in the back:

- Violin

- Piano  (sadly couldn't fit it in - had to leave it under the bed at Havarti's house) 

- Havarti's work bin (larger than a shoebox, but smaller than the crates)

- Havarti's work monitor

- Printer (in box)

- Small game suitcase (holds checkers, chess, mancala, cribbage, backgammon, Yahtzee, and a deck of cards)

- Kids' backpacks with books and activities for trip (set right behind their headrests for easy reach) (shoved up in the back wherever they would fit behind their seats, sort of within reach, but not really)

- Computer of whoever is driving at the moment

- Havarti's and my small overnight bag (the kids will use their backpacks to hold their overnight clothes and toiletries during long drives where we have to stay someplace overnight)

- Camera (or maybe up front with me, we'll see) (Yep, up front with me.)

- Beach umbrella

- Tripod

- Bag of The Muse's violin music and portable music stand

- Camping lantern

- Dolittle's fuzzy blanket she couldn't live without

- One pillow

- Dolittle's cardboard cylinder container with her big coloring posters (How did that moppet convince me to pack so many extra things?!)

WITH KIDS IN BACKSEAT:

- Dolittle's enormous stuffed horse (after much debate, I caved - she promised she'd hold it the whole way) (and so far she has, without any complaint)

- Pillows One pillow

- LeapPad

- DVD player (screens on backs of front headrests) (One screen went kaput right after we installed them. We'd used them for a couple of car trips without trouble. So the girls just shared one screen and tilted it so they both could see it

- iPad

- Cooler bag for car snacks (below BoyWonder's feet)

WITH ME OR HAVARTI UP FRONT:

- Computer of whoever is not driving

- Purse

- Bag with my home management notebook, road atlas, extra clipboard/paper, a ridiculous number of notepads that I've apparently been hoarding without knowing it, pens/pencils, etc.

- iPhones with Pandora, Spotify, Audible, and various other audio gems for our listening enjoyment 

- Kindle

- Water bottles

- Ziploc Sandwich bags

- Tissue

I suppose it's actually rather impressive that the only thing that didn't fit from my original list was the piano. It was rather ambitious, anyway. I did hope that we'd end up having a little space at the top for rear-viewing, but it's pretty much crammed right up to the ceiling. 

And here's the fam just seconds before our departure:

Sorry about the squinty faces. The sun was glaring right at us. And looking at this picture, I think it may have been glaring with contempt for us being such pasty white folk. Holy moly, we're going to blind the poor people at the beach in California. :)

See our cartop carrier up on top of the car? Havarti and I hauled it into the hotel with us. It's pretty easy to get off. Getting it back on in the morning will be interesting. :)

The first day's drive was fairly uneventful. We tried to stop in Iowa City to have lunch at Chipotle, but there was some big bike race happening downtown, so we ended up getting detoured all around it, couldn't find any parking, lost a good 45 minutes, and decided to just make do with the snacks we had in the car.

In Omaha, we saw a wild turkey on the freeway. The FREEWAY! Just hanging out on the shoulder, like it was out for a Sunday stroll. So weird.

Speaking of weird, know what we fed our kids for dinner? Edamame and strawberries and ice cream bars from Trader Joe's. I had sushi. And an ice cream bar. Havarti had a grilled chicken salad. And a couple of bites of The Muse's ice cream bar. He's so disciplined.

Thankfully, the hotel has a pool, so the kids got to blow off some steam after 9 hours of travel. Tomorrow we have many hours of driving through Nebraska to face. And unless we see some more wild turkeys playing chicken on the freeway, there probably won't be much to say about that. I've driven across Nebraska before. After Lincoln, it's a whole lotta nothin'. Like, seriously, nothing. 

I'm sure I won't be posting every day of our trip, but I wanted to get our take-off day documented before it gets lost in the shuffle. I truly want to thank all of you for your prayers and good thoughts and supportive comments on Facebook and here. This whole thing is exciting and fun, but also hard and frustrating at times. It's really helpful to have people encouraging us and getting excited along with us. I know that long road trips are always challenging, especially with children. They did really well today, considering. I'm sure the fun will outweigh the challenge once we're able to settle down at our destination. 

Night night. Three more sleeps til California!

What We're Packing and How

When I mention our plans to random strangers (which has happened a lot in the past few weeks), the most common question is a variation of "Are you taking an RV?" or "Are you hauling a trailer of some sort?"

Natural question. So I thought I'd explain a bit about how we're transporting ourselves and our stuff around the country.

We're not taking an RV or a trailer. We'll be staying in furnished rentals, friends/family's homes, or tent camping everywhere we're going. So we won't need kitchen stuff other than a cooler and a few basics. When we camp (which won't be often - it's not exactly my favorite thing), we'll eat very simple finger foods and hotdogs. If we decide we need anything other than metal skewers and paper towels when we're camping, we'll figure that out at the time.

We're taking everything in our car (Honda Pilot) with a soft-sided cartop carrier. The back of the Pilot has quite a bit of room. We're packing most of our stuff in stackable storage crates, like this:

See how they stack so neatly? Nifty!

This bin holds our school books/curriculum, for the most part. Our little bin of printer paper fits right on top of those books, with just enough room to close the lid. Super nifty!

We can fit ten of these bins in the back of the car, with room on top and beside them for other stuff, like the violin and electric piano.

One benefit of the storage crates is that after we unpack at a rental, they can all be stacked together and be shoved in a closet somewhere (and can be used for laundry bins, too). And the soft-sided cartop carrier can fold up inside one of them.

Here's how it all breaks down:

CARTOP CARRIER:
- Tent
- 5 self-inflating sleep mats
- 5 sleeping bags
- Beach umbrella
- 2 lawn chairs
- A couple of pillows
- Towels

BACK OF CAR:
- Crate 1: My clothes
- Crate 2: Havarti's clothes
- Crate 3: The Muse's clothes
- Crate 4: Dolittle's clothes
- Crate 5: BoyWonder's clothes (plus extra shoes)
- Crate 6: School stuff: curriculum, books, paper
- Crate 7: School stuff: games, legos, plastic animals, modeling clay, etc.
- Crate 8: Bathroom stuff
- Crate 9: Miscellaneous: Coffee grinder, French press (gotta have my coffee), Brita pitcher and filters, various spice cabinet basics, Wii (we debated this one, but it doesn't take up much space and BoyWonder loves it so so much), and a few other random things
- Crate 10: Cooler (not really a crate, but the same size) for transporting leftover food place to place

Also in the back:
- Violin
- Piano
- Havarti's work bin (larger than a shoebox, but smaller than the crates)
- Havarti's work monitor
- Printer (in box)
- Small game suitcase (holds checkers, chess, mancala, cribbage, backgammon, Yahtzee, and a deck of cards)
- Kids' backpacks with books and activities for trip (set right behind their headrests for easy reach)
- Computer of whoever is driving at the moment
- Havarti's and my small overnight bag (the kids will use their backpacks to hold their overnight clothes and toiletries during long drives where we have to stay someplace overnight)
- Camera (or maybe up front with me, we'll see)

WITH KIDS IN BACKSEAT:
- Dolittle's enormous stuffed horse (after much debate, I caved - she promised she'd hold it the whole way)
- Pillows
- LeapPad
- DVD player (screens on backs of front headrests)
- iPad
- Cooler bag for car snacks (below BoyWonder's feet)

WITH ME OR HAVARTI UP FRONT:
- Computer of whoever is not driving
- Purse
- Bag with my home management notebook, road atlas, extra clipboard/paper, pens/pencils, etc.
- iPhones with Pandora, Spotify, Audible, and various other audio gems for our listening enjoyment

That's pretty much it. I'll take pictures of it all packed on Sunday. There's a possibility that we will have to put the lawn chairs and umbrella in the back instead of in the cartop carrier. We'll fanagle it on Sunday morning.

Do you think we're missing anything important? I feel like we've pretty much got everything covered. It'll be crammed, for sure. But well-organized. :)

You might be thinking, What about room for souvenirs you buy on the road? 

No worries.

A few family vacations ago, we started doing those penny-smasher things. You know, the machines where you put in a penny and two quarters and it imprints an image on the penny of whatever place you're visiting? I used to think those were really stupid. Now I think they're genius.

I'll explain why in another post. It's time for bed. If you see any glaring holes in our packing list, let me know. :)

Three more days!

Too Bad Our Gargantuan Mop Bucket Couldn't Help with the Flooding . . .

We're just eight days away from departure. Yay! We have one more trip to make to the house to get rid of a couple of last things in the garage, and then we'll be totally done with that chapter. Holy buckets, moving is a gigantic pain. It's not one of those things that gets easier the more you do it, either. It sucks. Every time.

But enough with the moving complaints. That part's done. Now we can look forward to our new nomadic life for the next year. We're staying at Havarti's parents' until we leave next Sunday. (No sympathy necessary; my in-laws are unusually fabulous.) While Havarti is in Spokane for work, I'm wrapping up all of the last to-do's, such as online address changes, sorting out our schedule/routine for the road, catching up on work, getting our last few items to storage and Goodwill, etc.

Oh, and I'm also dealing with the traffic nightmare that Chicagoland has become due to Mother Nature's flooding joke. We're lucky that Havarti's parents moved last month, because the town they just moved from has declared a state of emergency. Crazy stuff.

Speaking of crazy weather jokes, we're going to be driving through Colorado in ten days. I really hope they get their whole April blizzard thing out of their system before we get there. Sheesh. Enough already.

The moppets are doing pretty well. The last week at the house as we were getting everything packed and cleaned was fairly brutal. Everyone got a little snippity. I don't remember ever being that physically exhausted for that many days in a row. Yesterday I had the girls do some bare minimum schoolwork and then told them they could do whatever / watch whatever / play whatever they wanted for the rest of the day - no screen time limits. So it was a Netflix marathon all afternoon. They really needed a decompression day, and I needed the time to get things done.

I could really use a decompression day, too. I'm picturing having one on the beach in Dana Point two weeks from now.

The good thing about the stress of moving out of the house is that it's going to make our nomadic life seem like a breeze. After many weeks of selling and giving, we were able to get all of our furniture and everything we're not packing in the car on our trip into this storage pod:

Plus a 5' x 5' storage unit. We really needed the extra unit. The bikes alone took up too much space to fit into the storage pod. And we ended up filling it with other things, too, like our cold-weather clothes (which we'll have to switch out with our summer stuff this fall) and our industrial-sized mop bucket.

Oh yes. One of the joys of being married to someone whose family owned a janitorial service for 35 years is that we have a mop bucket that looks like this:

Only it's a lot bigger than that in real life. Aren't I lucky? (Actually, I am, because Havarti does all the mopping. So I don't complain. Except when we have limited storage and a big honking yellow mop bucket. We got it to fit, though. All good.)

The crappy weather really is messing with our plans a bit, as I had assumed that by mid-April we would have been able to store our winter coats. But, alas, it was snowing last night. So we'll wait until the end of next week and go deposit our coats in the storage unit.

And then sunny southern California, here we come! Woohoo!

I have much to share about how we plan to spend our 30-hour car ride with three kids, what exactly we're taking with us in the car, and how we'll have it packed. But I need my coffee now, so I'll save it for later.

Eight days. Can't believe it's almost time!

This is Why I Haven't Been Posting

Where We're At

Yes, I know. I just ended a sentence with a preposition. It wasn't a sentence, technically, but still. I don't care.

When you're in the midst of a move - especially one that involves fitting all of your worldly belongings into a 16' x 8' x 8' box - "I don't care" becomes a standard response to some things you might normally give a fig about.

In fact, here's a list of some things I've let slide lately:

- My grammar (Clearly.)
- The cleanliness of the house (Although, really, I let that slide even when we're not moving. But at least right now I have that legit excuse, so I'm takin' it!)
- My hair (Scum bun right up on top of my head for three days straight now. So purdy.)
- Fashion sense (Not that I'm any sort of fashionista normally, but I keep slipping on my loafers with my sports socks and going out in public. Not so purdy.)
- Matching socks for BoyWonder (I see two socks that fit, they go on his feet. Bing, bang, boom.)
- Lunch (We have breakfast, then there are several snacks at various times, then Havarti usually pulls through with dinner. Go Havarti!)
- My convictions about screen time (I think the kids smell my weakness and have jumped in for the kill.)
- Any sort of formal education for the moppets ("Hey, play some math games on the iPad since you're already on there, kids! Then write me an essay about how mean your parents are for making you pack and organize so you can go on this trip of a lifetime!" I'm such a good teacher.)

And just to give myself a little credit, here are some things I have not let slide lately:

- Work (I've actually been able to squeeze in more hours for the magazine than usual. I think because we're done with all of our outside commitments and the children are keeping themselves quietly busy most of the day so I'll forget to nag them.)
- Creativity in the kitchen (I'm trying to use up the food we have in the freezer and pantry. It's amazing what make-shift munchies you can create with a few random ingredients. Hello, nutty, seedy, crunchy breakfast cookies!)
- Purging (I've become a little addicted to giving things away. If you're looking for a freebie, come to my house in the next two weeks. I promise you won't leave empty handed.)
- Exercise (But only because I'm counting hauling furniture and boxes to the storage crate as a work-out.)
- Snuggles (BoyWonder won't let me let that slide.)
- Tent wrangling (Mad, mad skills in this department.)

To further explain that last item: We opened up our tent for the first time last night, and it's awesome! It's huge (9-person, got it on clearance at Target for $99. Woohoo!). I might even be excited about camping with this tent. And . . . drum roll, please . . . we were even able to get that sucker back into its original carry bag. Amazing, right!? We might be the first people to do that, like, ever. Havarti and I feel like we deserve an Olympic medal in Tent Wrangling.

So that's where I'm at. :)

The rest of the family is in a similar place. We officially move out on April 14 to stay with Havarti's parents, and we take off for California on the 28th. The girls are both excited and sad to go. BoyWonder is the most excited of all of us, I think. He seems to have a pretty good grasp of what we're doing. He keeps talking about all the cities we're going to visit. I hope the 30-hour car ride to California doesn't kill his enthusiasm. :)

(A side note so I don't forget it years from now: BoyWonder loves maps, and he likes to watch Dolittle play Stack the States on the iPad. So, the other night, we were eating out at Uno's and he pointed up at the wall across the room and said, "Mama, there's a state!" I looked and couldn't see what he was talking about. "Look, Mama! I see a state! That's a state!" I looked again, thinking there must be a map somewhere, but all I saw were two street signs. Then I noticed one of them said "OHIO ST." I asked BoyWonder, "Are you looking at a word, sweetie?" to which he replied, "Yeah. It has O-H-I-O. That's a state!" It's amazing how kids pick things up that you don't teach them.)

On we go! I'll show you pictures of our storage unit and our upside-down house next time. Woohoo!