Flip a Coin, Take a Trip

That sounds like the name of a country song, doesn't it?

Thank y'all for your wonderful advice. I actually took everyone's to heart. Bearette, I did a mental coin toss and decided that I would be dissapointed if it came up to stay home. So, when hubby got home today, I talked to him further about it (since he's the one that's stuck at home making the moolah for me and the kids to frivilously spend AND taking care of our new bunnies which I have yet to show you pictures of). He had no hesitation as to whether we should go or not. I guess this is my last little fling before I have to become a responsible financially contributing member of the family again. When I called my mom to tell her we were coming, she was quite excited. My bro-in-law not so much. Not that he doesn't want us to come visit, but he always gets stuck with their massive amounts of kids while I sneak off with my sis to go galavanting all over town. Well, actually we usually just go to the grocery store or to Target or to take my kids to their friend's houses. But we have tons of fun along the way!

So, in 3 days I will be bookin' it up to Cleveland at O'Dark thirty in the morning for our 6am flight. I can't wait to tell the kids.....they will be soooo excited! We are going to get there just in time for our annual family camping trip. This is something that we started 8 years ago. We choose a different spot each year, sometimes close to home, sometimes a 7 hour drive away.

I'm also hoping to drive to Pooroville to visit with my grandma (who is not getting any younger....she's 89), my brother his wife and 3 boys, cousins, aunt, and uncle. Shall be fun for all.

SIDENOTE/RANT: I freakin' HATE the airline ticket websites!!!!!! I spent literally hours trying to find a good price for the days that we wanted to fly. I ended up going through Cheap Tickets.com even though they pissed me off the most. When I punched in One Adult ticket, the price came up $496. When punched in One Adult and One Child, the price was $526. And finally, when I punched in One Adult and Two Children, the price was $556. What the hay? So, basically they punish you for buying more than one ticket by adding $60 bucks extra per ticket!? I could not find any way around this, believe me I tried! They won't let you purchase individual tickets for minors online, you have to do that through the airline. We considered purchasing 3 seperate adults tickets and then playing dumb when we got to the airport...."Wha? There must have been some sort of computer error. These are obviously children, NOT ADULTS." So, I had to resort to giving in to the evil airline empire because I waited until the last minute (again) to make this trip and the airport where we need to go is small and always costs lots of money to fly into, no matter when you go or how far ahead you buy your tickets.

I will leave you with this: while I was selecting seats for each leg of the flight, I commented that it doesn't really matter which kid get's the window seat on their boarding pass. They can switch mid-flight if they choose. My lovely, yet morbid, husband replies, "The seat assignments are just so they know who's who among the charred remains. Maybe you shouldn't tell the kids that when they're changing seats." Yeah, I think I'll keep that one to myself. There's my peaceful mental picture to focus on during take-off and landing.

I almost forgot to mention: We get to visit Skippy!!!! The kids will love it. My sister sent a letter from Skippy and a couple of pictures awhile back. Boy, he sure has grown! For those of you that are newbies, Skippy used to be our dog. That is until we decided that we didn't want our house and ALL of it's insides torn and chewed to shreds. We didn't want to turn him into an outside dog or confine him to a cage, soooooo we sent him to CA to my sister. He seems to be doing quite well, gets to go to the beach, and has LOTS of attention with 7 kids hounding him all the time. I think he's got a pretty good life now (and our house isn't getting chewed to shreds). I guess some people are cat people and some people are dog people. Unfortunately, our daughter is an all animal people and she is still not over us sending Skippy away. Maybe a 3 week visit will last her for a while. Either that, or she'll be trying to smuggle him into her suitcase!