Another reason to leave your kids every once in a while - if you don't you'll miss the moment of reuniting. This is a pretty good moment.

GM is giving my family a Hybrid Tahoe to drive across the country to BlogHer. Woo Hoo! We'll actually drive it to Salt Lake City because we already bought plane tickets to San Francisco from there.

Itinerary & Pit Stops

We'll drive straight through from Texas to Utah. Average driving time 24 hours. This is a pilgrimage my extended family has been making for 3 generations. Last year it took us 36 because Hubby, who's new to this family tradition thought it would be fun to go 5 hours out of the way to visit Telluride, Colorado with a 1 year old strapped in his car seat, to ride a free tram. This year he said, "I think we should just get there as fast as possible with no detours at all. What's the shortest way?" Yeah, that's what I thought.

"Call my mom." I told him. You go on mapquest and look up your directions. But, we've made that mistake before too. MapQuest didn't jive with "turn left at the Texaco at the second light." You think I'm trusting the GPS system in this fancy Hybrid over 50 years of tried and true family short cuts? I think not.

We will stop to pee, on the side of the road and at gas stations, which have become progressively cleaner in the last decade. We will buy snacks at Sams to save most money and drive through the $1 menu a few times. We'll stop at playgrounds to temper Zack's inevitable "GET ME OUT OF THIS CAR SEAT!"

We will leave after the Hubby gets off work and shaves his head. Yeah, he says this is the perfect time to shave his head while he has two weeks of vacation time to grow it back. He's got a very round head so I'm expecting it to be sexy. (After the hilarious laughter from me and the kids from the shock of it.)

So 7 pm on Friday night, we'll get in a car a full decade and a half younger than our minivan, which has also been in the shop all week. We'll relish the new car smell. We'll hope it's fully insured for spills and food - hey, we've got two kids.

My husband will drive as long as he can. The kids will fall asleep and we'll have peace for a full 12 hours. Around midnight or 1 p.m. he's going to say he's too tired. I'll stop and grab a Monster, which I only drink when driving all night. Before that it was nasty caffeine pills that made me feel icky.

The directions, on a piece of scrap paper, read like this:

Denton - 278

Wichita Falls

Amarillo (This is where the humidity lifts and you can breath again)

40 to Albequirqui, New Mexico

25 to Bernadillo

Farmington

Shipwreck

Cortez

Montecello

Moab

Price

Provo

Estimated Time of Arrival, factoring in stops to post blogs at truck stops and a 6-year-old and 2-year-old and "it's too dangerous for me to drive at this point naps" sometime Saturday night.

We'll let the kids acclimate to Grandma and Grandpa for one day, and take a long nap, before we leave for San Francisco and BlogHer.