Summer brings longer sun-shine filled days, more family time than any one asked for, and an absolutely endless amount of snacking and sibling rivalry. Sometimes a surprise road trip manages to sneak its way in there somewhere. For my family we decided to load up the Jeep and hit the road to visit family in Ohio. However there was one little problem... My husband was unable to get the days off of work. So this meant that I would be driving alone with my terribly tone-deaf seven year old and my half-way potty trained three year old. Why would I do this you may ask? The honest and truthful answer to that question is... I have absolutely no idea what compelled me to carry on with the trip. Maybe it was my desire to see family I hadn't seen in quite sometime, or maybe I had actually lost my mind once and for all. Probably the latter. So this epic journey calls for a two part look into my sanity, or lack there of. Pray for me...
Part one is all about pre-trip prep. I am far more type A than necessary so I like to cover all of my bases for packing, planning, emergencies, entertainment, and all out backseat war between my children. When preparing for a trip like this I make lists, and then I make lists of my lists. Right now my biggest struggle is handling the entertainment factor. We keep things pretty simple, wherein my car doesn't have a top dollar entertainment package, and my five year old tablet finally bit the dust after a long dutiful life. My kids being two totally different ages made coming up with ideas to entertain them very difficult. My daughter loves podcasts, music, audio books, and talking while on the road, so easy, right? My son on the other hand... well,let's just say screeching like pterodactyl just for the hell of it is more his speed.
Temperance, the older of the two is also the monumentally easier to the two to entertain. She will just be thrilled listening to her favorite podcast, Brain's On! Which I highly recommend for any school-agers who are trapped in a car for an extended period of time. This is a science driven podcast that outlines any number of our kids crazy questions. We've learned about everything from jelly fish and GPS, to electrons and engines. What's even better is it isn't extremely annoying to listen to unlike 90% of kid focused radio. I also worked diligently to build her a trip binder. I put together a series of worksheets, games, and activities for her to do on our FOURTEEN HOUR drive up the East Coast. I am going to put these sheets, along with various coloring pages and other activities in a travel binder for her work on during the trip in hopes that it will buy me a few moments of peace. There are twelve pages in total and you can download them for free below to use on your own crazy car ride.
Now Gideon on the other hand is a little more difficult. Being three he is confined to his five point restraint car seat, unable to reach much of anything. There are not many things that successfully occupy his time for longer than five minutes, other than cars that is. Given a race track this kid can race his cars around forever. He likes to line them up, he even sleeps with them looking at him on his bed side table at times. So what would be better than some kind of portable race track he could use to play with his cars on? So using a 9 X 13 baking pan that should have been retired a long, long time ago I set to work. After a few clever coats of paint I managed to construct a laptop play set for his trucks. This is just the right size for his lap and the sides of the pan will keep his toys from falling down where his little arms can't reach.
So this is a start. I still have so much to do in order to prepare for this trip. More packing, more planning, you know the drill.
Stay tuned for Part Duex where I regale you with my tale of the dreaded fourteen hour drive there and back. I'm sure hilarity will ensue.
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