The Facts of Life and Pre Hawaii Preparations

Getting ready to leave on a trip is a lot of work. Especially when you are planning on leaving your kids. This was our first time having friends, not family, watching our kids while we went to Hawaii. I felt like the house had to be super organized and super clean. And I felt like I had to leave a lot of instructions for how things are done... like homework and getting ready for school stuff. 

I felt like the preparations were going great. I had most of the cleaning done, but still hadn't gone grocery shopping or packed anything the day before. That's when Carmen came home from school with lice.... I wanted to jump off a bridge right then and there! I did NOT have TIME to deal with this appropriately. I was leaving for Hawaii in less than 24 hrs. Luckily my mom came over and helped. We were able to "delouse" all the girls, including myself. I wanted to do everyone's hair just to be sure to nip it in the bud before it got out of control. We also got ALL the bed linens, towels, and stuffed animals washed and put back on the beds.

 

After that little fiasco was mostly under control, I had my mom fold 10,000 loads of laundry while I ran Carmen to ice skating lessons.  I quickly was separating the clothes so she knew what clothes belonged to whom. As I was frantically separating clothes before running out the door, I noticed this lovely art work on our tv..... Thanks Dallin. That would be crayon. I just ignored it and kept on going.

 

Once I got back from ice skating and the laundry was all folded and put away, thanks to my saintly mother, I realized Charlotte had almost no underwear. Just that day alone I had dealt with 4 accidents, mostly of the #2 variety and I had disposed of most of her underwear. I'm so tired of having to deal with this!!!! There must be some really great strategy on how to help your 4 yr old not poop her pants anymore.

 (I know... some of you readers will think "I can't believe she is sharing this story"! But lice and poop are facts of life and everyone is going to have to deal with them at some point.)  Finally about 10pm I started packing for my trip. I never made it grocery shopping and left almost no food for the babysitters. And things were not nearly as clean as I wanted them to be. I felt really bad about those things. But as the day kept progressing I kept telling myself "Tomorrow at this time I'll be sipping Pina Coladas in paradise". And I was!