Once upon a time, Olof and I had the bright idea to take the kids down to Legoland in Denmark this summer, and to stop off in Stockholm on the way and finally get the younger kids’ American birth certificates/passports/Social Security cards taken care of. It all sounded easy enough until today, the day before departure, when I’m buried under mountains of laundry and paperwork.

The sheer amount of stuff is near overwhelming … I’ve got what seems like an entire ream of paper in various forms and copies and copies of copies, and the clothes, you don’t even want to know. We’ve done our best to pack light, but when you’re talking seven people for ten days, “light” translates to at least four suitcases, a couple of carry-ons, and a stroller. I’m seriously considering mailing our dirty laundry home halfway through so that we don’t have to lug it around for days on end.

I’ve spent the past several days trying to psyche myself up for this, and I’m actually going into it with a fairly positive attitude. For once I haven’t over-booked myself, and we’ve got plenty of time to do what we want and need to do without rushing around too much. All of our travel days are just travel days, with no appointments or activities scheduled apart from getting from one place to the next, and I’m pretty sure I’ll be thanking myself for that later on.

We’re not taking a computer with us, so I’m not sure how much posting I’ll do while we’re away. I’ll try to pop in if I can, but I hate going online on my phone, so I’m not making any promises. You can be sure, however, that there’ll be plenty of pictures on our return next week!