In a galaxy far far away

That pretty much sums up how far away California feels right now.  I am not sure how we managed to move across the country and yet we are STILL an 18 hour drive from family in California.  This is one big country!

My initial thought was that, with my fantastic grandparents pushing 91 this coming year and my sister and a dear friend both having babies in December that a Christmas trip was in order.  But then you look at the logistics and it goes something like this.

I really need to get out and see family!  New babies!  Grandparents getting older!  Almost all our family is there!  Oh, the guilt of being so far away!

Wait… no one has bothered to come this direction in 5 years except for my dad and my good friend, Sara.

Oh, but the guilt!!!

But it’s so exhausting to travel with small children and it’s so freaking expensive!  I have no desire to pay money for the “opportunity” to herd small children onto an airplane and schlep them up and down the state in a car.

But everyone wants to see the adorable children!

Right.  They want to see them for a 2 hour maximum while they have a glass of wine and eat dinner and I run around like a crazy person trying to sound commanding: “Don’t break the knick-knacks!  You need to eat a real dinner!  Don’t fall in the pool!”

But surely I can make this work.  I am a smart woman.  All I have to do is:

Buy plane tickets ($300 x 4)

Rent a car that will hold all of us, plus 3 car seats, plus baggage so that we can drive from Northern California all the way to San Diego ($700 + gas)

Find places to stay in northern California, Fresno, southern California, and San Diego that don’t cost money and that provide at least 2 bedrooms (but boy, 3 would be much more conducive to sleep).

Pack enough stuff for five people for at least a 2 week trip.

Deal with children who are off their nap and sleep schedule for 2-3 weeks.

Deal with managing small people and equipment and never really get the chance to adequately catch up with anyone.

Spend an entire 2-3 weeks in California never going anywhere interesting like the beach or the mountains or doing any of the fascinating things there are to do because we are managing, feeding, and diapering small children and seeing all the people who need to be seen, separately, in two hour increments, with at least a 2-3 hour round trip drive in between.

Spend all the time in between seeing people trying to feed our small children who are too excited to eat when food is actually available.

Pack, unpack, pack, unpack, pack, unpack, pack, unpack, fly home.

Am I the only one who has this dilemma?  Surely there must be a way of doing this that does not end in bankruptcy or insanity.

Groupon is telling me that for under the cost of a “fun” let’s-run-ourselves-ragged-seeing-everyone-who-thinks-my-kids-are-cute-on-Facebook California trip my husband and I could run off to Ireland together for eight days with airfare and a rental car included.

And yet California happens to be where almost all our family and many friends are.  I don’t want to plant my feet and deem family travel impractical but I have been trying to figure this out for the past two months without success!  It is maddening, like a jigsaw puzzle that’s missing pieces.  What do you do when family is far away and you have small children and don’t own a private jet?  Is there an elegant solution to this problem?

I am truly curious if anyone has any solutions to share!