She's making a list, checking it twice...

A "to do" list that is. Things like, get more cat food, pack toiletry bag, pack bags, etc...
We're getting down to the wire, leaving in one week exactly! I'm excited about the trip but we're in the painful phase right now. In an attempt to ease jet lag, I've started getting the kids and myself up earlier each morning and then attempt to get them to bed earlier.

My children seem to have inheritated my inability to fall asleep early and get out of bed early.
Last night we had them all ready and in bed by 7:45 pm after getting them up at 7 that morning (we usually sleep unitl 8:30 am), they finally feel asleep at 8:45 pm (not exactly early!). This morning the alarm went off at 6:30 am and we finally rolled out of bed at 7:00 am.
My body doesn't like flipping and seems to be protesting by giving me a nice bout of insomnia at 3 am, which made the alarm going off at 6:30 am extra painful.

Our big plan is this: the plane takes off at 5:30 pm our time, we need the kids fed and tired so that they will (hopefully) go to sleep right away. It's a 9 hour flight to London and we want them asleep for the majority of it. Wishful thinking? Perhaps.
Then we have a 4 hour lay over in Hethrow (at our 2 am) but it should be morning time for us, so we want to wake-up and stay awake. Stay awake for the next flight to Paris, arrive in Paris at 4 pm, get to the apartment, get dinner, stay awake as long as we can and then sleep until morning.
Beautiful, right?
Hopefully.

Or it could all go terribly wrong and we'll have two tired and grouchy children and two tired and grouchy parents.