I have sent my boys off many times now over the years without me on vacation but they have always been with their Dad (or their grandparents).

I have sometimes gone several days without talking to them while they are away. I definitely miss them and think about them, but I’m relatively used  to the whole thing. When you are divorced, you quickly realize it’s not an option to keep them with you forever. (People used to comment to me, “I could never do that” when I said the boys were away. Well, there’s a lot of “nevers” that you end up doing).

Well sending Zach off to Ecuador seemed different somehow. And now that he is there, I have essentially no contact with him except for the instagram pictures his group posts every couple of days so we know they are alive and well, I feel quite unsettled! Strange how the mind can play games on you knowing that you can’t reach them, so wanting to reach them even more!

The plan was for his Dad to take him to the airport and for me to pick him up. Truthfully, I wasn’t crazy about this plan. At all. But I agreed to it, not wanting to be the crazy helicopter Mom.

But who’s kidding who. I can not deny who I am!

So the night before, he went to sleep at his Dad’s and I was fretting and told Rob I was going to go to the airport afterall.

His response: “Of course you are. I was already planning on getting up at 3am to take you.”

Have I ever mentioned how much I love this man?!

I’m sure Zach’s Dad thought it was not necessary for me to be there (hovering a bit too close), but he let it go.

My alarm set for 3:15, I got a call from his Dad at 3am. His Dad had some bad food poisoning and wasn’t able to leave the house.

So off we went to go get Zach first before heading to the airport.

I didn’t mind that one bit!

We arrived and checked in. His bag was a teeny bit too heavy. Which we totally knew. The night before it was a lot too heavy so we had tried to move things around and put more in his carryon. No, he’s not an excessive packer (like me), but he was taking things for the project they are working on, the kids at the orphanage, as well as the families that he will meet. So we couldn’t remove anything there. We were able to get it down to “not so bad, they won’t care about a little overage.”

Wrong. They care. At least their automated scale cares and when you are .2 over, you are charged $100. Eek. Out came his snacks for the next two weeks (luckily I’m a pretty good packer so was able to get most into his carryon which was stuffed to the max too as he had to have all his stuff for the weekend in the Galapagos in there as their checked bag was continuing on to Cuenca).

Anyhow…

We got to the gate and had a tiny bit of anxiety to contend with. I secretly love it when my kids act like they need some reassurance from me:))

And then he was off!!

We texted a bit to know he had gotten through security and customs (without a single question!) and then he was on his way.

I heard from him in LA where he was able to navigate the airport and find the right terminal, get all checked in and head to the gate. He met a couple of people from his group at check in and that put my mind at ease.

The next we heard was through a picture on instagram that they had arrived safely! At this point, he had been up for 24 hours and had another 6 hour wait and 2 hour flight to go!

But it looks like he’s doing just fine.

They already hit the beach (the next update):

What an adventure of a lifetime!