Hello, Road Trip

After spending nearly a week in temporary lodging and three more days on the road we are totally exhausted. Before we left, I did a lot of research on how to keep kids happy in hotels as well as in the car. A lot of the recommendations I found were for older more self-sufficient kids. Mine are 2 and 3.5 and still tend to drop/spill things if not overseen diligently. We didn't want to spend 24 hours in the car hearing "I dropped it" and searching for marker caps or other small items underneath all of our personal belongings.

Many sites I read said to leave late and drive through the night while the kids sleep. We wanted to sleep at night like normal adults so we chose to start our days early instead. We were up every morning by 6:15 and on the road by 7am. We'd drive for about an hour before stopping for breakfast. The kids actually really enjoyed seeing where we were going. Our trip wouldn't have been the same had they slept through the whole thing.

I brought a tablet loaded with six kids movies. We only watched HALF of ONE the whole trip. For the car I bought a couple of new toys, which were a huge hit.

Melissa & Doug Water Wow - This thing is great. Instead of Crayola Color Wonder, which has marker caps to lose and loose leaf paper, this is compact and spiral bound. All you need is the included "pen" which colors using nothing but water. Adrianna must've played with this for 5 hours each day.

LeapFrog Chat and Count Smart Phone - This is an updated version of a toy we used to have. I remember Adrianna loving it, so I bought one for Natalie and she loved it as well.

I also brought some books that I'd been hiding for several months so they seemed new to the kids, even though they weren't.

In the hotel we had magnetic doodlers for the kids to play with and my genuis idea - a beach ball! It cost a whopping dollar at Target and easy to compact for transport simply taking the air out. This was a great way for the kids to burn energy each night.

All in all, the trip went better than expected. At our first hotel we had our pack and play in addition to a crib they supplied, so each kid had a place to sleep. After that though we just had the PNP and still needed a place for Adrianna. We originally planned on me sharing a bed with her, but all of the hotel beds were way too high off the ground for us to feel comfortable with that. Instead, we made a floor bed for her and she LOVED it. I imagined that she would spend the entire night running around the hotel room waking everyone up, but she literally just laid down and went to bed. We are lucky to have such good kids.