We’re off on our way to a vacation to Italy! It’s a result of several years of local-only trips, completion of Financial Peace University, and a generous sabbatical program from work. It’s also thanks to a huge help from Grandma and Grandpa and Aunt Sherrie who will be watching our four little munchkins for the entire duration.

Amanda has been amazing at getting all the final prep work done this last week while I was on a work trip. She’s even packing while I write part of this post! Though I’m doing my part in contributing by reminding her that we’re only planning to take TWO bags. It helps that we’re both so detail-oriented; we each have multiple lists of items and tasks to complete before we leave. Thinks like putting travel alerts on our credit cards (done!), making medical waivers for the kids (todo…), creating a contact sheet for family (done!), getting passports (…uh oh…), handing the house keys over to friends who’ll be staying here a while (hear that, robbers – people will be home, so don’t rob us!).

Now before you go and think this is a romantic getaway and we’re going to be coming back with some sort of news to share, let me squash that rumor right now.  We have no intentions of becoming pregnant on this trip! I mean… you can’t get pregnant if you already are, right?  We figured we should plan this trip before we have any more kids, since the likelihood of finding people crazy loving enough to watch all our little angels decreases with each added blessing. I guess it was a good call since between scheduling the trip and actually taking it … stuff happened.

But more on that later! We’re now in the final hours, taking time off from preparations to focus on our family and enjoying our remaining time together before a long separation.  Ciao!