planning for another holiday

This year we're planning to spend our Christmas holidays with my husband's family in the US. As early as now we're already talking about preparations for that. Given our current debt that we plan to put in at least $500 fortnightly and save as much as we can to prepare for expenses, we would be in good shape come December. 10 months away and yet it feels like tomorrow in my mind.

I still need to get a visa and that would mean money because all applications are only managed in Auckland. We also plan to report the birth of our child at the same time, which also means a couple hundred dollars or so. All of us need to fly to Auckland to do that. That would roughly cost us $1000 including airfare and application fees. Blah.

Much as I'd like to be aggressive in paying our plastic debt it doesn't going to help us much because J wants to go to the following cities: Seattle, Portland, San Francisco, Charleston (where his family is), New York, and Burlington. West to East baby. As we plan to drive to Portland and San Fran from Seattle, I hope that would save us money. At this time I think our plane rides would be Wellington to Seattle, San Fran to Charleston, Charleston to NY, and maybe NY to Burlington. Maybe we can even drive from NY to Burlington but we have to make that decision as soon as possible. He's going to get in touch with friends that we could probably stay with but I'm going to prepare for the worst and just think that we'd be staying in motels. Yes, no hotels so that it'll be cheaper.

By then our child will be nearly 2 years old and traveling should be more fun for us because he can already communicate better with words. He's still virtually a free passenger until his 2nd birthday so might as well take advantage.

Geesh. We just arrived from our 5-week holiday and here we are again planning for the next. It's also looking possible that my sister and her beau are going to join us and that would make for a fun road trip.