Memorial Day Weekend is almost here, the official launch of summer and weeks when the Land of 10,000 Lakes becomes the highway of 10,000 road trips.

We're getting an early start on the family vacation this year with a long weekend in Omaha for my grandmother's 90th birthday, an event I'm both excited about and filled with dread over.

I can't wait to finally greet my family, many of whom have never even seen our new son, except via Facebook pictures and YouTube videos. But the actual process of getting there? That is definitely not something I'm looking forward to.

Night Driving
"We learned pretty early on from our car trips to Omaha with Vi that our best bet for easy traveling was to take off shortly before she was ready to go to bed, and to drive on through the night.

As an infant, Vi tended to fall asleep every time you stuck her in a carseat, so driving with her during the day meant staying up all night later when she wouldn't sleep due to overnapping. 

The other side of the coin from sleeping child: screaming infant or bored toddler, neither of which were conducive to long car rides.

Then on one trip we blew a tire at 10 p.m. on the interstate. Between unloading our car, changing a flat on the side of the road and consoling a crying child—who couldn't come out of her carseat or be held since I had to hold my cell phone as a flashlight—that was pretty much it for the drive-at-night theory.

But now we have two children to consider and are probably going to go back to the steering wheel, as it were. I hope we will have an uneventful trip, with Vi watching a movie for a bit until it's time for her to go to sleep, and Bass sleeping the entire ride (a nice change for a baby who recently has decided that sleeping through the night is no longer his activity of choice).

Day Tripping
Without Bass, we'd likely switch to daytime travel, now that Vi is old enough to entertain herself a bit more while we are on the road.

On our last trip we factored in a few extra hours to add additional activities (and leg stretching/potty breaks) to the excursion. We brought a cooler full of foods that she picked out herself, and picnicked at a rest stop along the way. We dropped in at an old-fashioned candy store and let her get a treat for the rest of the trip. And whenever the inevitable whining started emanating from her carseat, we brought out a new coloring book, cartoon or small toy for her to play with, keeping her distracted until the next stop.

That sort of thing doesn't work as well with an infant, unfortunately. Each stop of the car becomes a fight to get moving again before he wakes up, crying, upset because the motion that lulld him off to sleep has ended.

There's the search for the soothie that always falls out, wedging itself underneath his chubby thighs if we are lucky, or in the dirty car floor if we aren't.  Plus the fear that he will wake up hungry, demanding a bottle, adding an extra half hour or more to a trip that's already a tad too long for our comfort.

So, we'll travel at night. We'll hope for the best. And this time we'll be sure at the very least we have a real flashlight.