2x2? No thank you.

As most of you know, Mark and I have been planning a road trip for July/August. Our goal was to drive all the way to Seattle, stopping along the way to see friends and family. Today, while chatting with my cousin in Chicago who is the proud papa of two young children, I was lead gently by Nate to a bit of enlightenment.
"So," he asked, "you ever do a road trip with Lily before?"
"Yeah, we went to Northern California when she was two months."
"OK... how about recently, anything over two hours?" he prompted.
I thought about it and replied, "No, but she likes the car pretty well, usually goes right to sleep."
"Elaine, that means you can pretty much drive in two hour shots, maybe three. Take it from me, we've tried the road trip thing and it's a good day if you can make it beyond the two hour Mark."
I thought about this: all the way to Seattle in two hour sets? Ah, no.

SO! Rather than try for Seattle and possibly have to rearrange the entire trip after only a few days on the road, we're going to keep ourselves in California. This means we'll be missing some wonderful friends who we love very much and for that we are bummed. BUT, these friends all have kids and probably we're whispering to each other that we were NUTS for attempting this venture, so I think they'll understand. The good news is that all of you in California will not be treated to the abbreviated hey-how's-it-going-gotta-go visits we were plotting out on our calendar. We'll get details to you all shortly, but we're very much looking forward to our first big road trip!

Everything else is great, we're having a blast watching Lily grow and learn and take her first halting steps. We're also overjoyed to welcome a cousin for Lil, baby Liam was born to Elaine’s brother and his wife last month and Lily is just itching to play with that boy. We're coming up on Lil's first birthday, which freaks us out to no end, and will be attempting to celebrate with a small gathering at our new house. More details on that one to come as well.