Back to CA...

So, I'm doing it. Again.

It's been just over a year since I made the insane decision to take the boys (then 7 and 5) and drive from MN to CA, spend a little over a week with my mom (aleha hashalom) while she still had strength, and drive back home. In December. In the snow. Uphill. Both ways. Really.

The trip went well (you can read about it below if you haven't yet, or if you don't remember what happened), and we made it back home safely. It was, as it turns out, the right decision, as my Mom's strength declined shortly after our trip. She had been diagnosed with Stage IV pancreatic cancer just before Thanksgiving and she passed away on Mother's Day 2009. She was 65.

Now it's finally time for my brother and me to go through the house and all of Mom & Dad's possessions (Dad passed away in 2004). The paper cup full of twist ties should be easy to deal with, but as with any death of someone you're close to, it's the personal items that are the hardest. Despite every effort to think of it all as "stuff" -- things we can't take with us when we go -- just imagining going through the items I know are there is stressful. I imagine my brother and I will be going through a lot of tissues.

I'm flying out in six days, on January 15, 2010. Husby and the boys will stay home. Husby will look for work (he lost his job last week; anyone looking for an awesome computer network/security guy in the Twin Cities?) and the boys will go to school, and they'll all entertain the pets.

Coming back, however, I'm going to drive. Yep. Rent a minivan, pack it up with whatever of Mom & Dad's stuff I'm bringing home (not the cup of twist ties), and drive roughly 2073 miles from CA to MN, uphill, through the snow. Alone.

I'm seriously questioning my sanity. Again.

Are we there yet?

The boys are so excited to go, they wanted to "practice" rolling their suitcases around the living room. Just to see how it felt. And then much to my surprise, they went to bed at their normal time and went immediately to sleep.

Maybe we should pack and prepare to leave more often.

With a few last-minute exceptions, we are packed and ready to go. The only remaining item on the To Do List is refueling the van, and I was delighted to see gas at $1.55/gal today.

Just think: our next blog post will be on the road. And we can answer the much-awaited question of what time we got going.

California here we come!

Abuzz

Well, dear readers, you don't seem to have much confidence in us being on the road before 8:00 a.m. That's okay. Honestly, I (the mom) don't either. But we can have our ambitions.

Yoni and Daniel are experiencing normal mood swings under the circumstances. They are sooo excited about going ("Are we leaving tomorrow? The day after that? When are we leaving?") but they are sad about the things they will miss at school, too. Or at least they are sad about missing a field trip and their friends.

We could be gone as long as three weeks all told, including travel time, and that seems like forever to kids whose ages are still in the single digits. (It also seems like forever to spouses who haven't been apart from each other for more than a week during their 22 years together, but that's another story.) Thank goodness for technology!

Tomorrow (Tuesday) is the Big Packing Day after school and with it, saying goodbye (albeit temporarily) to friends and classmates. And Abba (Dad). It will be an emotional day and I suspect none of us will sleep well tomorrow night.

Which could mean a very late start. Or, with the benefit of secondary insomnia, it could mean a very early start. We shall see.

Shopping, shoveling, packing, and where's my other sock?

Hi all and welcome to our new blog. Here's our story in a nutshell:

I (the mom) and my two boys (Yoni age 7, Daniel age 5) are embarking on a road trip from Minnesota to California to visit my mom (the boys' grandmother), whom the boys affectionately call Blue Grandma.

Why are we driving? Because airfare is way too expensive to fit our budget. And because I (the mom) am insane.

Why are we going now, in December? Because my mom (Blue Grandma) has been diagnosed with pancreatic cancer and we want to see her again before she hopefully goes in for surgery and gets rid of all the nasty cancer.

Why are we blogging our trip? Because Yoni and Daniel will be missing a week and a half of school to go on this adventure. (Hi Talmud Torah!) And because we want to show their teachers that yes, they really are learning more than how to work the van's video player. And because lots of people here in cold, snowy Minnesota worry about us and we can relieve and entertain them at the same time.

And because I don't have enough to do or enough to worry about. In short, because I am insane.

So now we are doing our last-minute shopping for the trip and setting aside clean clothes to pack and doing massive amounts of laundry so that we have clean clothes to pack, and shoveling the walkway outside because despite our busy pre-trip plans, it insists on snowing outside.

It was 4 degrees out earlier today. How weird to think that in a few short (or maybe not so short) days, we will be driving with the windows down in sunny California. We might even get a tan. In December!

We're getting ready. The only thing we're not doing is sleeping.