The palm trees along the hotel driveway swayed in a slow, sticky breeze.

I stood on the balcony of our room and watched my husband’s rental car get smaller and smaller until it was just a white dot at the end of the road. Then it turned left, and it was gone.

Below me, our three kids were splashing in the pool. Max was doing cannonballs. Darlene was screaming every time he landed, in the good way. Cynthia was sitting on the steps in her floaties, very seriously pouring water from one plastic cup into another.

Their laughter floated up through the thick Florida air.

And a strange calm settled over my shoulders. The kind of calm that shows up right before you finally admit something out loud.

Six years of marriage. Three kids. Eight months of planning.

That was the math running through my head as I held the balcony railing.

And I thought, I’m done waiting.

I need to back up. To the planning. Because the planning is where it all started.

I planned that vacation for eight months.

I’m not exaggerating. I started in January, right after Christmas, when the house was still full of torn wrapping paper and Mark was asleep on the couch with a football game on. I sat at the kitchen table after the kids were in bed and opened my laptop and typed family beach vacation Florida into the search bar.

And I didn’t stop for eight months.

I stayed up way too many nights comparing flight prices. I had a spreadsheet. Then I had three spreadsheets. One for flights, one for hotels, one for activities. I color-coded them. Green for booked. Yellow for maybe. Red for too expensive.