Packed and Ready to go...

Our bags (all 6 of them) are packed.
The mail is stopped.
The Olivia handbook has been written.
And our little girl has been prepped.

Of everything I've done to get ready for this trip - the planning, the researching, the booking, the paying - I think talking to Olivia about what's going to happen has been the most important.

We've left her before. We've left her overnight before. We've even left her for a week before. But think about two weeks away from your two year old. That's a long time.
Her best friend just boarded an airplane and moved 1,000 miles away. She knows he's not coming back. I want her to know that Mommy and Daddy are going on an airplane, too, but we're coming back.
Our conversations started about a month ago when we saw a helicopter circling. I told her Mommy and Daddy were going to go on a helicopter ride. That prompted a few questions and I told, no, she couldn't go on it, but when Mommy and Daddy go to Hawaii we're going to take a helicopter ride. I then told her that in order for us to get to get to the helicopter we'd have to take an airplane. The entire time I stressed that she's be staying with her grandparents, but we'd be coming back.
I even got her to ride this horse for her first pony ride by telling her Mommy and Daddy are going to ride horses in Hawaii. I can't believe it worked! This is the girl who LOVES to look at the merry-go-round, but refuses to ride it.
In the month since she first spotted that helicopter that started it all, Olivia has occasionally brought up our trip. But now she tells me that Mommy and Daddy are going to go on an airplane and that the airplane is going to take us to "Ha-why" but "come back to Livvy."
In other words: we're now ready to go and she's ready for us to go!