the hills are alive...

I have a gift. I am able to convert even the simplest task into a chaotic spiderweb worthy of much angst in my little mind. (sigh). After finding vacation airline tickets (finally) last week, we put them on hold, only for me to discover the next day that Delta pilots were planning an imminent strike, likely to result in an airline shutdown. Oops. and Crap. Thus, followed several days of worry and angst and a phone call or two to my dad to demand that he provide me with the correct plan of attack, and then ta-da(!) the strike was averted at the last minute. So all that was left at that point was to go pay for and pick up the tickets. But wait! I managed to find the one travel agent in town who was planning surgery followed by several days of bedrest immediately after she put our tickets on hold. In addition, I picked the only travel agent with notes so confusing that no one else in her office could interpret them. ANGST. The deadline for this deal was today (and note that in the meantime, airline ticket prices have been creeping up and up and up so that any new purchase of these tickets would cost us oh, about one thousand more than we had found earlier, and I exaggerate not. ANGST. We finally found a member of the travel agency who could interpret the bed-ridden, fresh-out-of-surgery original agent's notes, but WAIT!!! The computers were down at the consolidators that the tickets came from. Not only that, they were down all. day. long. Finally at about 4 pm, DH called to tell me to stop the angst - the tickets are ours.

(!)

So now, this summer, we are headed to Austria and Germany. (OMG, OMG, OMG, click on that link for some gorgeous photos!!) Yes, Mare, John is planning to take a picture of me and my friend Jamie and all of our kids singing "The hills are alive" on a mountainside. I'm excited!! Of course, we haven't planned a thing about this vacation other than meeting up with Jamie and Jamie and their wonderful kids in Eisenstadt for a while. We'll probably spend some time in Germany. Jamie has also been seducing me with tales of gorgeous lakes in Croatia. We're there for 15 days, so we'll be able to do some wandering. I can't believe we're really going to do this!

One of the things that makes me so happy about this trip is that my kids will be old enough to enjoy it and have fun, and young enough to still love hanging out with me. We went to a movie tonight and one of the previews was for the Robin Williams' movie "RV". It showed him with his little 5 or 6 year old daughter, who was telling him in her sweet voice that she wanted to stay with him forever. It was so sweet, and sounded just like my sweet E. Then the next scene was her as a teenager. (zoom on rolling eyes) .... "Why is dad such a DORK?". LOL.

On the way home I asked E if she was going to be a teenager like that. She said "Yes" without even thinking about it much. I think she's already planning it all out. Q contributed, "Well, she'll be like that with you, mom, but not dad". (He's pretty astute - yes, I also believe I'll have some girl/girl head butting in my future). DH asked "Q, are *you* going to be a teenager like that?" Q laughed and said "No, why would I? Boys are much more mature than girls."

(silence for about 3 seconds, then DH and I BURST into hearty and raucous laughter)

A few minutes later, Q, who was laughing with us said "Dad! I didn't say boys were mature, I said they were MANURE." (snort) He is SUCH a boy.

Anyway, the point is, we aren't there just yet. My sweet 7 year old daughter loves to sit by me and stroke my hair and hold my hand and she thinks I am smart and funny and adorable. I'm gonna SOAK that up and we're gonna SOAK it up together in Austria this summer.