If we can keep everyone reasonably healthy, and ensure that neither of these mamas decides to deliver on her threat of “turning this car around” so to speak, we’re leaving on Friday to drive to Charleston, SC for spring break.

I generally enjoy our drives. Our kids are pretty good road trippers because they’ve all done the New York-to-Michigan round-trip a number of times in their short lives. Kristin and I listen to a lot of podcasts and music, Jonah watches movies, and all of the kids sleep a lot on the road. Michigan to Charleston is a few hours longer each way, however (15 hours total), and we’ve never driven before, and since the twins are two and in that stage of childhood where even a few months can change a kid dramatically, we’re not entirely sure how Jude and Vivi will feel about being on the road for that long. Our last major road trip was our move, and they were about 17 months old. We didn’t bother to rig up any sort of screen for them and they seemed to do fine without it. I had my doubts about that being the case this time around so I invested in a headrest mounted tablet holder that they can both see from their rear facing car seats (we have a DVD player in the minivan, but only Jonah is forward-facing so he’s the only one who can see it). They each picked out headphones (green for Jude, purple for Vivi) and hopefully it will keep them engaged for a number of hours.

Despite the fact that I’ve been looking forward to this vacation for some time, I’ve been overwhelmed by anxiety about it lately. This is probably due to a few things. First, whenever we travel as a family I do the majority of the planning and packing. Kristin is awesome as launch coordinator – she loads the car like a boss, takes out the trash and generally gets the house ready to be left for awhile, and she’s a great driver while we’re on the road. She tends to log way more driving hours than I do. But if I asked her to pack the kids or even weigh in on their outfits, she’d wait until midnight the night before shove-off to do it (which is when she packs her own things). So I end up packing myself and all three kids, which also includes any shopping that has to be done for the four of us. In this case a lot of shopping was involved, because none of the kids had much in the way of warm-weather clothing that fit.

A second contributor to my anxiety is that we’re having family pictures taken while we’re down there, so what we bring is actually somewhat consequential. And the third stress factor is that any vacation that involves staying with family isn’t always relaxing. See additional (hilarious) opinions here and here supporting that claim.

I’ve had actual nightmares about this trip for two nights in a row. The first night I dreamed that we were all going on a very long international flight, but for some reason Jonah and I were checking in separately from Kristin and the twins and we were going to have to meet up in the airport somewhere. Shortly after checking in I realized that I’d accidentally left everything that I’d intended to have in my carryon in my checked bag. I ran through the airport searching for my suitcase because I needed those things for the plane, and my phone was checked so I couldn’t find Kristin.

Last night I dreamed that I’d arrived at the setting for our family photos, only to realize that I was wearing shorts and some sort of undershirt, and that I hadn’t shaved my legs in weeks. I panicked and tried to rush home quickly to change my clothes and shave, but the photographer was already there and everyone was waiting and it was too late.

Obviously I’m holding onto some stress about planning for this trip and having everything go well. I have a packing checklist and three piles of clothes for the kids, but I need to actually narrow those items down and get them into bags, and then figure out what on earth I’m bringing and wearing in pictures, and just hope that Kristin has what she needs in a bag by the time we pull out of the driveway. As stressed as I am, I love Charleston and I love seeing the kids with their cousins, so I really am looking forward to this vacation. I hope to get some cute pictures of them in some new scenery, and hopefully have a lot of laughs with my family.