I was writing for travel tips and then nearly talked myself out of taking a trip at all! Offer me your wisdom, wise ones.

We are beginning to plan a trip for the fall and are not big travelers. We've only ever done semi-local (like, 5 hours max) road trips with our kids.

Our daughter will be 4 1/2, and our son will be just over a year. We will be staying with two different friends- both friends have kids, and will be able to get us a pack and play for the baby to borrow. We will probably just bring our carrier for the baby rather than deal with a stroller. The one-year old will be a lap infant on the planes.

We haven't booked tickets or anything yet, but it looks like it will be a 6:00 AM non stop, just under 3 hour flight. we will hang out there (Atlanta), then rent a car do a day-long road trip (leave early, take a few stops) of about 7 hours to New Orleans. Hang out a few more days, then take a 6AM flight home with one 40-minute layover. That flight will be shy of 5 hours. In total it will be about a week long. We'll leave on a Monday so that we have all weekend to get ready, and then come back on a Monday (my husband will probably take Tuesday off to help settle back in).

So writing it out has me very nervous. But we never travel and we're going to spend a few days with one of my best friends, and then a few days with my husband's best friends. They have both come to visit us and I feel like we need to return the favor (and they both live in fun places that will be lovely in November, just when its starting to get very cold here). We had a weird tax situation this year and ended up not having to pay in all of the money I'd saved (I'm self employed), plus got some back- so we kind of have this random cash we weren't planning on. We never save for trips (we just have other priorities) so this feels like...if we don't do it now it will probably be another 10 years (but by then my kids can carry their own stuff and will sleep like normal people, so maybe we should just wait!).

SO I need a pep talk about how great this will be and how even though I will be exhausted I will be glad we did it because it isn't THAT much like torture to travel with small children (right?).

Also- Car seats:
I'm seeing mixed advice about buying cheap car seats and gate checking versus renting them with the car?