Planning for a Tour Bus- Day 1 & Day 2

I once heard that you should have a short engagement before marriage (I followed those instructions as best I could in my own engagement) Date someone for a good long while to get to know them and then once you know you want to get married and you get engaged why drag on the planning of your wedding for a long LONG time?!

 Why plan for 2.5 years a big ONE day event? 

Why torture yourself?

I think your engagement should be short because you can get stressed with all the details and you can keep adding more unnecessary details to your wedding the longer you have time to think about it. I can plan, but I don't like to plan, maybe that's why too much time to plan a wedding sounds absolutely dreadful to me.

Why am I talking about this? I am losing my train of thought...mom-nesia, mom fog-whatever you call it (You must know that I drove 3 miles home with my iPhone on the roof of my car! So grateful for my Speck grip case! At least my kids were in the car strapped in. I have my priorities straight.) 

 

Oh! Here's why...All that rambling about planning weddings to say that I liken the stress of planning a wedding to planning for a trip with kids! I just hate the planning process. You do all the hard work to plan for the wedding day so that on that day you can let go and have fun. Planning and packing for a trip is my least favorite thing and I can't wait til it's over and we are on the trip having fun. 

My husband knows that a cloud gathers over my head and my demeanor when I am about to pack. He looks at me and says something like "Let me guess, are you starting to pout about packing?" I begin to whine about the job and hard work of packing. He must know every detail and all my thoughts about "shoud I do this?" and "should I do that?" 

Tell me I get to go on a trip and explore somewhere new and I am so happy like a child at Christmas. But tell me I have to pack and I whine like a child who dropped her ice cream.  I. Just. Can't. Stand. Packing. I think I need someone to hold my hand and give me hugs  throughout the whole packing process. Wah!

I didn't even like packing for myself when I was single. So now that I have to pack for myself and two young kids (and sometimes a dog), I can get a little crazy in my head until the day when we put all the suitcases into the car and drive away. Once we drive away, I breathe a sigh of relief that I did what I could do and that's the end of it. The planning process is over yay! I am a whole new person and I can just roll with it!

Speaking of "roll with it", we are literally rolling on the wheels of a tour bus right now. And I am lying here feeling a bit of satisfaction and success that I did PLAN. Below my bunk is my 3 year old daughter Aria (who sleeps like she's in a wrestling match) secured in her bed with a Zippy Sack (there is an obnoxious commercial on TV about it, luring all kids to want one. I hope you get to see it!)  I PLANNED for how I could keep her in a bed while flying down a highway at full speed and so far it's doing the trick! Thank you Zippy Sack for your obnoxious commercial.

 Directly across from Aria is Ireland (6 months) and she is sleeping in a Crib tent (secured with straps underneath the mattress) because I PLANNED ahead of time how I would keep a rolling and face planting 6 month safe in her own tour bus bed. So far so good with the plan. Mommy success!

I know the first thing about keeping them safe is to plan to not have them sleep with me.  I learned early on as a child that I was a dangerous snoozer when any stuffed animal I had on my bed would be flung across the room by morning. The end of my wanting stuffed animals as a child, I didn't see the point. 

Well all this PLANNING didn't help me PLAN for how I would sleep in a moving hunk of medal. I am still awake. It's not normal to bounce and sway while I sleep. Maybe I should have ordered another Zippy Sack!

The Gear! (Our first night was in a hotel)

Heading over in our caravan of cars to load onto the tour bus. It's a whole crew of us but it already feels like new family. (More details about that later. Now I'm nursing a child in the back lounge, surviving on maybe 3  solid hours of sleep)