Getting Ready...

Our trailer is being born as I type! Or possibly already has been. I don't know. But it was scheduled to come off the line late yesterday or sometime today.

That means that we're getting ready to head out to Texas to pick him up. (Yes, it's male.)

That also means that we are going nuts, because there is a LOT to figure out. The manufacturer needs to ship the trailer to the dealer. The dealer won't send the trailer to Texas until they have our money, which won't happen until we close our loan. To close our loan, Bank of America needs some number from the dealer, which the dealer has to get from the manufacturer. Bank of America also needs our Texas address to close the loan, unless we want the trailer titled in California, which we absolutely do not want. There's also the issue of planning our route and timing so that we arrive in Houston a day or so before our trailer does, because we need to have the hitch installed.

We had planned on waiting until we were in Texas to go in person to get our address. However, this "needing a Texas address to close the loan" thing threw a wrench into those plans. We went yesterday afternoon to have our necessary documents notarized and overnighted to the organization we're using for our mail service, so we should (hopefully) have our address by tomorrow afternoon. Presuming there are no snags with that (knock on wood), that's one major component out of the way.

Then there are the usual hassles of going on "vacation" with two kids: the packing, sending the dog to the boarder, making sure the house is clean in case someone wants to come buy it while we're gone, canceling swimming lessons, etc.

Oh, there's also the matter of making sure we have all of the paperwork we need with us, and securing insurance for the trailer (needed to close the loan), plus securing insurance for all our vehicles once we have them registered in Texas.

And probably 15 other things I'm forgetting.

Our tentative plan is to leave very early in the morning (like 5 a.m.) Friday, then get to the Phoenix area that afternoon. We'll spend Saturday eating at Manuel's and hanging with friends, then we'll leave very early Sunday to get to western Texas. We figure two more days from there to get into Houston.

We plan on driving about six hours per day, and we hope to knock half of that out before breakfast. We don't want to push the kids (or ourselves, for that matter) too hard since we haven't done a roadtrip with them before.

Hopefully we're in for smooth sailing!