So Julie and I sat down last night to go over our summer plans and schedule vacations and days off.  I think I’ve mentioned on this blog before that probably the biggest benefit of working for McCann is that we get boatloads of time off.  So we have some time to do some nice vacations, like our 3 week vacation at Christmas this last year.  Anyway, I jokingly (well only HALF-jokingly) asked Julie when she wanted to go to Germany this summer to visit Jodi and Christian, who moved there last year.  It got us talking about it.  It actually makes sense as a great time to go this year.  Next year is the big family Hawaii trip, and the year after that or maybe 2 years after that, we’ll be going to Italy for the Rome temple dedication.  When you’re leaving little kids behind, it just doesn’t seem right to leave them for more than about a week and I don’t want to be racing through Italy to get to Germany and splitting time between the 2, so I’d much rather take 2 trips.  Julie was skeptical so I got online just to see how much airfare was.  This was what I saw…

Wow!  Can you say serendipity?  What luck!  $474 round trip tickets to Germany from now through May!  That is an awesome price to Germany and a great time to visit.  I could see the doubt start to waver a bit in Julie’s eyes.  But her main concern was the kids.  They’ll feel bad because we just went on a cruise a few months ago – now we’re leaving them again.  And it’s during school, so someone would have to come stay at our house to watch them.

“Huh, what kids?” I asked.

OK, actually I said, we’ve got brothers and sisters, cousins and friends – we could find someone to watch them, couldn’t we?  Maybe Katie and Tagg?  No they’ll be busy with internships after school.  What about Meg?  I don’t think she has any plans for her summer break.  So I decided to call my amazing, beautiful, intelligent little sister Meg and see if she was still awake at 11:00pm to just gauge her reaction to something like this.  Here’s how our conversation went:

“Hi Meg, how’s it going?”

“Oh Derek, I would LOVE to watch your kids.  I totally want to.  I would even take a week off from work to do it.”

OK, well it wasn’t quite that easy, but almost.  There was actually one more sentence in there where I mentioned that we were contemplating maybe going to Germany but we would need someone who could come stay at the house to watch the kids since it was during school.  But that was it.  And Meg was practically BEGGING us to let her watch the kids for a week.

Julie started to get a little excited now.  One last check needed to be made though.  We called Jodi and Christian, waking Christian up at 6:30am there.  Turns out they are completely available and would LOVE to have a visit.  So that was it.

Now Julie got nervous because “it just seems too easy”.  I guess we got a visit from the easy button last night.  Which was EXACTLY why we had to do it.  So we bought the tickets!  We’re going over from May 25th to June 2nd.  I’m way excited.  Julie’s still way nervous.

Hopefully the actual trip goes off as easily as the decision and planning did.

I got this email from Julie this morning.  It makes me feel so bad for her.  I’m not even including all the details she sent, just some of it so you can get an idea of her morning.

“Well, I have not had the best start to my day. And eating my breakfast has lasted longer than any I recall. Everyone is always in need of something. I made it down stairs by about 10 min. to 8 A.M. I broke-up a fight between Peyton and Soren because of the new, rude, mean job chart Peyton had made for his brother after he tore up his old one. Logan was trying to talk to me the whole time as well, wanting to show me something. After getting through that whole ordeal I decided to pour me some cereal. So I had a bowl with dry cereal poured in it by about 8 o’clock. Peyton was yelling that he couldn’t find any pants so I went to help him. The babies were awake now and on the stairs wanting me to hold them. Luckily Logan came with a distraction and I got the boys situated. I ran back down to hurry and make oatmeal for the babies who I knew would be hungry. I tried to hurry and load dishes while the oatmeal cooked and I answered questions from the boys about everything they needed to take to school. Soon the babies were in the kitchen and into their high chairs. We gave them their treat from last night while I finished up and said goodbye to the older boys. Then I fed the babies the oatmeal and got some more for Eden. I gave the babies some milk to drink and poured some into my cereal and finally had a few bites while I tried to clean up. But then babies were ready to get out. I got Maren out who had a very bad poopy and was leaking so I changed her. Then went to get Roman out who also had a bad poopy and while going to get a diaper that was across the room he peed on the carpet. I hurried to put on his diaper and clean up the potty….“

and on and on and on.  I know my parents will say that someday we’ll look back on these days with sadness that they’re gone and to relish every minute of it.  But does that mean we’ll miss the moments of insanity too?