North! to Alaska!

Oh if only it were that easy. . .

You see, one of my dearest and best friends and her family have decided to move BACK to Alaska after only a little over a year BACK in Nebraska! I am so sad to lose her and her fun children, and yes even her hubby who is a good friend of my hubby and yes, Jason, I'll claim you as a friend too. LOL. But I am happy for them to really know where they want to be. And, evidently, God is in their corner on this one. They have been hashing the idea for some time and a job opened up for him, and he got it plus some extras they needed to be able to make it work, then they sold their house after only 2 days of announcing their move back. They never even listed it! Talk about a God thing!

Anyway, to my dilemma. . . they have asked if we (the hubby and I) would accompany them on their road trip back north. The trip would even include airfare to return home. Immediately I wanted to jump up and down and say, "Yes!" But then the adult/mom part of me kicked in about a millisecond later and realized that I had to think about the logistics of this and my kids. Darn you adult/mom part! Yes, I realize the trip wouldn't be all roses as it would be A LOT of time in a vehicle WITH their 3 children and Miss Thumb Sucker (as she is too little to leave behind for over a week), but it would still be a great adventure. The hubby and I would even stay in AK for a few days to do something fun before we returned. After thinking about the fun it would be all the "If-we-go, I-would-have-to's" started to kick in.

If we go, I would have to:

-figure out what to do with my other two children while we are gone.

-figure out how Noisy Man would get to preschool

-figure out how to get passports in 3 1/2 weeks since we will drive through Canada

-figure out how to survive more than a few days away from my little darlings

-hope our director wouldn't axe me for missing a 3 or more play practices for the musical

-do some math on how much the trip would cost, including me taking more than a week off daycare

-and I am sure there are many more my hubby will bring up tonight when we sit down to talk about it

But, oh what an opportunity! What an adventure! Am I completely nuts for wanting to go?

All the pics are ones from our trip up to AK to see them when they lived there before. Back when Noisy Man was younger than Miss Thumb Sucker. . . I think just 4 months old. He was so cute (and of course still is). Can't you see why I want to go back and can't blame them for returning? :)

Update: We discussed the trip and decided that the challenges outweighed the fun. Mostly, the $330 it would cost us to get our passports without the guarantee that we would get them in time and the fact that it would be VERY hard (on us and them) to leave the other 2 kids for 10 + days. I am pretty bummed, but we promised since we weren't going this time that we would start saving up to go up for a full vacation in 2 or 3 years. Would be fun to do for our 10 yr anniversary in 2013. Seems so far away, but then we would have more time to fully enjoy Alaska. We would have also had to cancel our Colorado Ski trip plans for this upcoming Valentine's day if we did this, so now we can still look forward to our ski trip!