how we roll.

Naomi and her husband, Josh, are roadtripping from the West back to their new home in D.C. Looking at their pictures and reading the funny little tidbits have made me think back to a roadtrip my husband and I went on right after we got married. Ah, who am I fooling?

It wasn't quite a glamorous, voluntary road trip.... It was a military PCS (permanent change of station) from California to Texas. We'd both used up our weight allowances for the government to transport our belongings, so Ben's Chrysler Sebring was packed to riiiiiiiiiight here full of the rest of our stuff. Literally, there was only just enough space for the two of us to squish into. Me less than him.

Nevertheless, we were thrilled. We'd been in training for over a year in CA and were headed to finish up the last leg of it. We got married two months before leaving and enjoyed setting up house in a teeny-tiny apartment -$1,000 rent, baby!- that was a few minutes away from Target and the beach. My brother called the morning we were leaving. I am a notoriously loud phone-talker and Ben said every line of my conversation echoed through the complex parking lot.

Then off we went.

I drank our entire storage of roadtrip Capri-Suns before we'd even left California. And Ben's favorite polo blew out the window somewhere near the border.

Did I mention the Chrysler had no air conditioning? And that we drove through Arizona and New Mexico to get to Texas? In July? We soaked kitchen towels in the melted ice in the cooler and draped them around our necks.

I read the latest Harry Potter and finished it somewhere in the desert of Arizona. I cried through the last fifty pages and perplexed my husband.

Oh yeah- it was a very posh roadtrip.

The roadtrip scenario has changed a bit. Now we're passing juice boxes to the back seat and trying to soothe a two-year-old who dumped all his snacks on the floor. We're frantically remembering to charge the portable DVD player because there's no way we're surviving a 12-hour drive without Aladdin's help. I have a little buddy to accompany me on the gas station bathroom trips.

There are more faces in the rearview mirror, and more crying over things other than Dumbledore's death in Arizona. But I must say- the roadtrips have gotten better.