One of Zach's proudest moments as a father

Seriously, it's adorable how ridiculously giddy it made Zach that his son picked up a football and started running with it. =P

In other news, it's hitting me that my mom, step-dad, niece, and teenage sister will be arriving here on Friday, and then Sunday we'll be leaving for a 2-week stay in the mountains. Which will be awesome, but it also means packing. And making lists for the packing to make sure I don't forget anything (or at least anything important/hard to replace). And trying to figure out how the heck we'll fit everything into our cars. Or how Zach will get around next week without one of his own (we'll need both cars just to get the 6 of us up there, Zach will join next week along with some friends of ours and my sister Jenny). And I only just today realized that the place we're staying in the first week won't have bath tubs, so I'll need to bring something to bathe D in (luckily Julia has an inflatable baby bath tub we can borrow). And though I'd never thought of this before since every time we go hiking (say that is if I go often... HA!) Zach takes D in the backpack carrier so normally this would so not be needed, but I'm realizing how nice it would be to have a stroller with all-terrain wheels for going on hikes. Which our Maclaren, as much as I adore it, does not exactly have. So now I'm scourging Craigslist for used joggers, and am pleased to find a few listed for about $50 though, we'll see if any of the emails get responses or if those strollers are still available. By the way, does anyone know of a website that maps out parks/playgrounds that are close to the highway that we could stop at on the way? Because I do not foresee my child happily sitting still in a car seat for 4+ hours without some way to burn off energy, and I'd prefer outlet to not be frantic screaming.

This seems to be a pattern every time we've gone on a trip with Donovan, where I'll spend the time leading up to it in denial or plain forgetting how much more effort it takes to plan for traveling with a kid, and then a few days before leaving I'm hit with this realization of OH MY GOD THERE'S SO MUCH TO DO! I know it'll get done, and it'll be so so SO nice to have family around for a few weeks. It just feels a tiny bit hectic at the moment.