You may have noticed that we’re pretty big on family trips.

As difficult as traveling with a toddler and an infant in tow can be, it’s one of our all-time favorite things to do, because sure, when kids are involved you have to be flexible, and sure, sometimes things may not go as planned…but those are the best parts: those unplanned detours and wrong turns down dusty roads so often end up being the moments you remember most of all. It’s not about staying in fancy hotels or eating expensive meals or planning out the ‘perfect’ itinerary…it’s about taking your family on adventures that are unique to you, creating the kinds of experiences that your kids (and you) will remember forever.

But getting it together to plan family trips isn’t always easy. You mean to book that special vacation that you’ve always dreamed of going on, but then the months fly by and all of a sudden the time when you could have gone is past. You want to try out a new destination, but it’s so much easier to just head back to that same town and that same hotel you’ve always gone to. You tell yourself that this is the year you’ll have that experience you’ve always dreamed of, but then just…don’t. Because it’s easier to do what you know.

Allow me to assist. Because if there is one thing I am an expert on, it is jerry-rigging your Halloween costume because you couldn't get it together to actually shop for a real one.

Here we are in 2008, in costumes that serve as a perfect example of the aforementioned jerry-rigging: this year, we were Pete Doherty and Kate Moss. Except when I dressed up as Kate Moss I ended up just sort of looking like I'd done a better-than-average job of getting myself clothed, so I added cat ears and whiskers and called myself Pete Doherty's cat (because, if you recall, at the time he was famous for being a completely atrocious cat owner, which made the whole concept pretty tasteless, but Halloween is a good time for tastelessness - maybe not this much, but some).

Anyway.

Alright, so remember when my basement flooded a few months back? And we had to junk pretty much everything that resided down there?

That was no fun.

It wasn't nearly as bad as it could have been, though, because most of the stuff I really care about - photo albums, special baby clothing, et cetera - is either kept elsewhere or stored in waterproof bins (a spectacular and completely unprecedented moment of foresight and preparedness on my part).

One thing that we did end up having to toss: the boxes filled with our holiday stuff. Our ornaments were in the attic, but the rest of it? Our tree, our little decorative items, our wreath…all gone.