Packing For a Trip

We are gearing up for another trip! So excited and nervous and terrified and chomping at the bit and feeling totally unprepared. I dug out my daily travel bag, which is just large enough to fit my journal, a book, and daily essentials (actual essentials, like phone, wallet, keys), and still had a few remnant receipts and mints from Taiwan last year. She is ready to be put back into action.

Stationery for this year incudes:

• Traveler’s Notebook Love & Trip edition (although indecision reigns: will I swap it out for the Tokyo edition at the last minute?)
• scissors
• a few rolls of washi tape
• glue stick
• a few gel pens
• one fountain pen: the Pilot E95S
• several A5 Midori MD Notebooks for me and the kids
• A Kodak 4pass photo printer with extra cartridges for printing out photos for our travel journals

On the photo printer: this is a necessity for our family, both because of the kids’ travel journalling, but also would be for just me solo. Last year was my first year with the Kodak 4pass, and it was faltering and sputtering by the end of the trip. It prints photos similar to the CMYK, where there are 4 passes with different coloured film to print out coloured photos. I had some not totally insignificant challenges with several cartridges where the rolls of the coloured film bunching up and jamming. It’s not like the Fujifilm Instax, where if one photo is messed up, you can just try again with the next paper, if the roll is off, the remaining photos won’t be lined up. Eventually I ended up with an even more substantial problem where the gears were out of sync, so the four passes of the different colours did not line up properly and the resulting photos were terrible.

So I got a new printer: the exact same one I had last year. Haha! For better or worse, the cost per photo is cheaper than the Fujifilm (if also being harder to find). With the two older kids, me, and possibly Junia printing out 1-2 photos nearly everyday, I don’t think the Instax printer would be sustainable. I haven’t yet sorted through the calculus of costs given how many photo prints were wasted in addition to the expense of the ones printed out, but who am I if not irrationally optimistic. In case you’re interested, here is a blog post from last year about the kids and their travel journals.

Last year, our first big travel adventure after Covid, I prepared a few things for each of the kids, activities for the plane and down time in hotels, but this year, I’ve been so disorganized and busy that I’ve mostly just grabbed things from hither and thither and I’m hoping for the best. I’ve basically abandoned preparing things for the older two, and have communicated that they are to fend for themselves. My excellent parenting is only becoming more excellent as time passes.

I’ve collected a few books for Junia, which also includes the big Richard Scarry omnibus, as well as the big Richard Scarry sticker book that I’d been saving for just such an occasion (the occasion of being underprepared and needing something at hand), a tin of tiny pencil crayons, and her own A6 travel journal.

And I think this is my reading line-up. Yet to be confirmed! I have not put as much thought into my reading this summer as I did last summer, but good thing I had some leftover titles from last year.

And also: Caleb and Naomi’s reading line-up. We are going to have to spread the books out among all the luggage to evenly distribute the weight, along with the additional math workbooks and French grammar exercises, weighing us down physically and spiritually.

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In any case, we are wrapping ourselves up, rolling up t-shirts and cramming them into nooks, throwing last minute reading additions onto the piles, contemplating airplane snacks, putting random bottles of sunscreen and liquids into ziplocs, organizing the cat sitting, looking mournfully at the pile of laundry. For as long as Jon and I have been together we’ve never had a dryer, just really enjoyed the endless, Sisyphean stream of hanging laundry, and now I’m questioning my life choices as the days count down.

We’re heaving ourselves off the ground! Can’t wait! Send us your recommendations and prayers.