All the arrangements for the pets have been made, frantic shopping for travel-size shampoo and airline-friendly snacks finished, and loose ends at the office finally tied up. Yet somehow it's the day before we drive to Chicago and we are still up at midnight. We should have taken a cue from Mary who started packing about 3 weeks ago. Could it be that we're really not prepared or just too excited to call it a day? Probably both.

Tomorrow we depart from Green Bay at 8 am to meet Mary and Dave. We'll caravan from Sherwood to Cari's place in Chicago. After a yummy lunch we will all pile into a taxi-van for the trip to the airport. Then the fun really begins: poking and prodding through security, a few hours of waiting, then onto a huge metal tube that can fly because some physicist says so. Don't spout mumbo-jumbo about lift and air flow, a 10-ton bird should not be able to fly.

So maybe the joys of traveling aren't always the most joyous parts of the traveling. Either way, we'll be arriving in Shannon around lunchtime Thursday...which will feel like the wee hours of the morning for us. But we'll be so thrilled by the newness of it all, we won't have time to think of the time change.