Cue The Go Go's

Last year I used up my vacation time during Bodie's eventful entrance into this world. So, I knew that this year's vacation had to be special. We wanted to go some place exotic and tropical. A place that the kids would remember for years to come.We narrowed the list of many places to go down. Would we visit Hawaii? Cancun? The Galapagos Islands? Or would we stay local and visit San Diego (I forget what that means in German)? After hours of brainstorming there only seemed to be one logical place to go. So, we loaded up the car and a little over 9 hours later we arrived.

That isn't exactly how all the planning went. Actually, the newest addition to the Kelley Klan was going to be blessed. So, we decided to make a vacation out of it. It started out as being a trip for the entire Kelley family, but Jed's roller derby squad made the playoffs and his family had to stay home (or something like that). So, my family, my parents and my youngest brother all met up at my brother Kyle's house. We spent around 10 days in the reproductive mecca of the country. We did quite a few things on our trip and many pictures were taken. I'll use the next few posts to break down some of what occurred and give some helpful travel tips along the way.

Here is my first tip: When you will be driving a long distance in the summer with many children, Do try and drive in the evening. There are so many benefits to this. The biggest one is that the kids will be sleeping for majority of the trip. That means you don't have to struggle with the decision of bringing earplugs or earmuffs. You also don't have to worry about making a ton of potty stops, or feeding the animals/children throughout the trip. You most likely will avoid tons of traffic and the weather will be less likely to give your vehicle hot flashes.

Another tip: When you(meaning your wife) decide that you should leave in the evening, Don't get up really early that morning, put in a full day of work and be awake for your 24th straight hour during the drive. The combination of the darkness, minimal traffic, and long stretches of absolutely nothing are very likely to cause the Rip Van Winkle effect. Having had Big Blue aligned a couple of days before combined with cruise control and a very long straight path made it seem reasonable to take some kitty cat naps, but many carrot sticks helped me fight off the temptation(that I can remember). Although, at one point in time I thought I was having an enjoyable conversation when I looked over to see this:

At that point I knew that it was Sara's turn to drive. She took the wheel for an hour or so, and then I drove the final leg of the trip. We made good time and arrived just after the kids woke up. Everyone was well rested (well, almost everyone) and excited to be on vacation.