Future Road Trip

Well, today was the last day of school and work for the next two weeks. We've got all the gifts wrapped, the cookies baked and on Sunday, we are off on our journey to Sweden. Andreas brought home our rental car today. Apparently it is a bit smaller than what we thought we were getting. But hopefully we can get everything (and everyone) squished in. I anticipate our trip to go something like this:

We are up bright and early, excited to start our 4-5 hour road trip. There's a ferry ride involved, what could be better? We spend 3 hours jamming everything but the kitchen sink in the car and take off. 5 minutes later we're back, we put Emma in the car with us this time, and we leave again. 20 minutes into our drive we discover something of importance that was forgotten but have to live without it. Let's hope it wasn't underwear. Assuming there are no big ferry accidents, we'll be in Sweden and on the road to Orust. By now, the thrill is gone and the kids start the whining/fighting/being annoying in general. Hanna is going for a world record for most words said within the span of an hour. Eden's irritating Emma so as to make her scream at a volume no human eardrum should be able to withstand. Andreas' is questioning his decision to get the car without a trunk. I am starting to get car sick from having to turn around to deal with the shenanigans 15 times per minute. Either that or it's Andreas' driving making me ill, which is probably the case. I suspect by the time we arrive at the Arffs' I will have lost my cookies a good 3 or 4 times. After a while I will have past the point of no return and will spend the rest of the trip with my head in a barf bag while Andreas trick drives, backhands children and stuffs chocolate into his cake hole at the same time. This is going quite well, only 3 more hours to go! We'll eventually have to stop for a stretch and pee break. I decide moving is not a good idea at this point so I will stay in the car, ready at any moment for another round of projectile vomiting. Andreas figures a movie would be great at this point so he puts a DVD in the player and we set off again. But Hanna is whining because she can't see when the DVD player is in front of Eden instead of herself. Eden is crying because she wanted to watch Fairytopia but Emma won the screaming match and they are watching Cars instead. Andreas has a vein popping out of his forhead that is about to burst open and expose his steaming brain. And I am still hunched over my barf bag, feeling slightly better at this point but figuring Andreas is handling everything quite nicely on his own. (snicker snicker) After threatening to make a quick stop at the next clinic for misbehaving ankle biters, where they sew children's mouths shut for $5 (and give us a coupon for 3rd visit free), things settle down. Everyone gets out their munchies and after smelling food I hurl one more time in my handy dandy gak basket. Kids doze off, Andreas opens his eyes every now and then to make sure he's still between some lines and my gut has finally ran out of juice. I'm sure we will also endure a round or 50 of the "are we there yet" and "how much longer" questions too. I wonder why they don't equip family cars with the window between the driver and the back seat passengers, you know, like in limos? That would be sweet. But, we'll make it (hopefully with our sanity) to Sweden all the same. It's Christmas, and it wouldn't be Christmas without a wonderful family bonding experience that can rival any Chevy Chase vacation movie. To be continued...