Are we there yet?

Saturday morning was a bit surreal. Typically, I wake up and blearily look at my phone to see if there are any urgent issues at work.  Zero emails.  I had turned off my work email the night before at 12:08am after tying up all the loose ends. My sabbatical had officially started.

For the past year or so (and daily over the past three months), I would tell the girls, “Uh oh….bad news….they cancelled our sabbatical.”  It got to the point where I would say, “Uh oh….bad news…” and they would groan and say, “we know….they cancelled sabbatical.” Aren’t my kids lucky?  As we were packing the car, I came outside to a huge banner they made:

If you could see the detail in this banner….the canoes, the sun with the goatee, the different state landmarks, the kids fishing, the campfire, and tons more…you would agree that it was worth all the groans. These kids are so creative and I really appreciate all the work they put into this. And of course, I appreciate their ringleader, my wife.

We didn’t push off until about 9am. Sherri was kind enough to let me sleep in a little bit, and then we spent a good amount of time packing the family truckster. Earlier this week, we took a look at the cavernous inside of our Excursion, which could probably fit a Hyundai inside of it, and thought that we could use another 20 cubic feet. So we went to Sears and got a cargo container to strap on the top. 

Have you ever had to pack for a four week trip? Neither have we. I hope we didn’t forget anything. But if we did, I have no idea where we would have put it anyway.

We were on the road for a very, very long time (about 35 miles or so) when Emily asked, “How long have we been driving?”  Half an hour, Emily, half an hour. We stopped at mile 97 for a bathroom break and it was, “Are we there??” 193 miles in: “Are we there yet?”  The good news is that we only have about eleventy billion more miles to drive.

We crossed our first state line at about 2pm:

We arrived in Albuquerque at about 5:00pm and met my family for dinner. It was great to see everyone, and the kids got to see their cousins, Alexa and Alyssa, who are growing like weeds. Alexa plays golf, drives a car now (watch out!) and works at a golf course. She is going to be a Junior in high school next year and is already looking at colleges. Alyssa is going into the 7^th grade (same age as Haley) and also plays golf. It was also great to see my parents and sisters, and I wish we would have been able to see my oldest sister’s kids.

(Tandi (my older sister), Cindy (my mom), Roger (my dad), Alexa (my niece), Traci (my oldest sister), Alyssa (my niece), Emily, Haley, me, Ashley, Sherri)

After dinner, we went to my old neighborhood. It was a lot of fun, but everything looked so small. This was my world when I was a kid, and it seemed so much bigger when I was a little punk riding my bike around the block.  Also, a bit of trivia for my PayPal peeps….James B and I were talking one time and I found out that he lived in Albuquerque for a few years, went to the same elementary school I did (at the same time) and lived right around the corner from me. Small world. 

This is the house I grew up in. I lived here for almost 18 years. It used to have an incredibly well-manicured lawn that my dad did an awesome job taking care of. As you can see from this picture, I am almost as tall as the house now.

Me showing the girls where I used to climb up on the chimney to get on the roof. Do as I say girls, not as I do.

Initials I put in the cement on the sidewalk over 30 years ago

After reminiscing, we checked into our hotel.  We were planning on going to the pool and hanging out with my sister and nieces, but the pool situation wasn't the best, so we decided to pass.  Instead, we took the girls to see Monsters University. We got back to the hotel and crashed at about 11pm. It was a great, full first day of our trip.