No U-Turn

Just received the summer tenants' completed applications and email stating that they are transferring money to our account! 

No turning back now.

Guess I should get going cleaning this house.

Tomorrow!

It'll be a present to me for Mother's Day...and Happy M Day to all you amazing mamas out there!

Looking Ahead - the Plan

Summer 2009 officially begins at 2:35:00 PDT on Friday, 6/12, and its arrival will be announced by the familiar hoarse ring of our sons' school bell.  Once rung, we will have 10 days to get everything ready and embark on our road trip.

This gives me 40 days to prepare.  Prepare for what you ask?

1. Pack all of our private possessions into organized, well-labeled boxes so they can be transferred to my parents' home for storage.
2. Pack all of my sons' clothes into storage so their closets will lay bare.
3. Pack 85% of my home, including all personal wall-hangings, into our storage room.
4. Re-arrange my house so that I have a bed in each of my 4 bedrooms. We currently have two rooms serving at media room and office.
5. Pack for our 45-day road trip.

WHY #1-#5 you ask? Because we have found 4 students from Standfurd (mis-spelled in the most loving way possible by a Cal alum) who will be interning at JPL and will be renting our home fully furnished from mid-June through Labor Day!

Yes, it's A LOT of work. But hey, our mortgage and utilities and such will be covered by their rent, we'll have house sitters while we're gone, and it is the fulfillment of my husband's much-awaited, 9-year-in-the-making answered prayer for his wife to purge all their accumulation and finally really clean the house!

I have 45 days.  Ready, set...

Wait, wait... did I tell you that the river "de-Nile" runs long and strong in my life?  At the banks of denial is where I go to water my roots of procrastination.

Well, as long as we have an understanding. 

Ready, set...GO!

Glance in the Rearview - Some Background

Someone really wise once said that if we drive just looking in the rearview mirror, we'd eventually crash into something in front of us. But who am I to follow what I say? Sometimes you just gotta look back!

It all began in the Summer of 2008 when 4 Tangs set out to "use up" some mileage from our SUV which was leased and due back in April 2009. 4 Tangs packed up the SUV, strapped a two-screen travel DVD player to the back of the headrests, charged up their Nintendo DS's, and headed east.  Destination: Lake Jackson, Texas.  Route: LA-Vegas-Flagstaff-Albuquerque-OK City-Lake Catherine (Arkansas)-New Orleans-Lake Jackson-San Antonio-Scottsdale-LA.

We were gone three weeks but would be changed forever. 

It's hard to explain how a good time can be had by a daily routine of being in a car for more than 6 hours a day, not sleeping in our own beds, and the constant packing and unpacking. But what a good time we had!

Hotels were graded by the kids on the size and condition of the swimming pools, we experienced people and foods that we'd never sampled before, and best of all, we ended our trip hungry for more.

So here we are, 4 Tangs a year later, ready to explore the country again.

Some of our friends, you know who you are (Janet), asked us to update our experience hitting the road this Summer. I've never been quite the consistent do-er, but there's a first time for everything.

So buckle up, we've got the Tangs, the Van, and a tank of gas...let's run through our checklists and get ready to raise some...dirt!

Vroom, vroom!