We leave tomorrow for Chicago. I'm so behind on organization that I haven't even made up the list of what I'll need, yet. Though I did manage to refill my prescriptions yesterday, at least.

We'll spend Wednesday and Thursday nights with Matt's mom, and then the rest of the trip with his grandparents. We have a wedding to go to on Sunday, but other than that, we have no real plans. I'm rather looking forward to the opportunity to loaf around and relax.

And, of course, staying at Grandma Brooks', we will be Fed.

We're renting a car for the trip so we don't have to impose on anyone to find a carseat or drive us back and forth to the store and such.

So really, it should be a nice, low-stress trip. I'm rather looking forward to it. And there's always the fun of seeing the family reactions to Penny -- they haven't seen her since last Christmas, and she's changed so much!

We need to spend some time tonight doing preliminary packing. And prepping the electronics -- we still haven't decided whose computer we're bringing, but whichever one it is, we should probably load a movie or two on it. We'll bring the DVDs with us, too, but it eats less of the battery to play off the hard drive, and sinc one of the primary reasons for bringing a laptop is so Penny can watch a movie on the plane...

Come to think of it, given that we'll be spending most of a week loafing around and not doing much, maybe we should bring our Netflix with us, too. Couldn't hurt, right?

It occurs to me that by the time we get back from Chicago, it'll be time to buy Penny a Hallowe'en costume. Past it, a bit, even -- the first year we went to buy her a costume (when she was 1, as opposed to when she was 2 months old, because everyone gave us costumes that year) we went a week or so before Hallowe'en and there was pretty much bupkiss left on the rack.

Oh, well, if we can't find anything to fit her this year, she can be a princess. We have princess dress-up clothes aplenty.

And I think it's my turn to take her out, this year. Whoo!

--Liz