Planning to Travel

When you go on vacation the most dreaded phrase you can hear is "Are we there yet?" over and over again. Well, that and "He/she touched me!" Ha! When the boys were born I decided that the drive needed to be the start of the vacation not a torturous part until we get to the vacation.

Since this drive to Atlanta was our first without hubs I wanted to be extra prepared. There wasn't going to be any turning around to help or entertain. All of my focus was going to be on driving which meant I needed to make sure I had my plan in place before we left.

First, music. This is the console of our van. We have 6 slots for CDs. That means two for me, two for Little Guy and two for Big Guy. We picked our favorite two CD and loaded them in the CD player to get us started for the trip.

Next we need a map. I made maps detailing our trip for the boys so they can keep up with where we are. Both boys love maps so I think they will enjoy marking off the trip as we go.

One of the new things that I included for the trip was a bag system that coordinated with the map. I used very simple bags....

You can't get much simpler than a brown paper sack can you? But it worked perfectly. The first paper sack the boys found was in their seat when we were ready to leave. The outside said, "Breakfast Bag". It contained a simple breakfast and some chocolate milk. Getting on the road early was a must and I knew that eating in the car was not ideal but they seemed o.k. with it when I included chocolate milk and powdered donuts along with their fruit.

The second bag said "Mile 62" on it. It was their job to keep up with mileage and when we got to 62 miles in the trip they could open this bag. In it was a new video of their favorite comedian, Tim Hawkins.

Here is the preview for this video. Driving and laughing... So fun!

I had bag numbered for different miles... 173, 243, 390, etc... Each mile written on a different on a different brown bag with different items inside.

Some of the items in the bags:

* art book and art pencils
* the next books in the book series the boys are reading
* a travel game ... "You Sunk My Battleship!"

* another video
* a Brain Quest card deck

* new CD of music
* Found this great book which the boys loved!    It was something to "do".   Had pipe cleaner animals and creations all over the car!!

* the Klutz road trip book

 *  I had printed out plenty of blank SOS dot sheets and Tic, Tac Toe boards so that they could play games together too.
*   License Plate Game - I printed out a copy of the United States map so that they could mark off license plates as they see them.

In addition to our brown bag entertainment, each boy had their own travel boxes full of their own personal entertainment. They were packed with their Nintendo DS, iPods, games, books, and other items which they love. Of course no trip is complete without their special travel blanket.

This made our drive so much fun and entertaining. The only stops we had to make were for bathroom and gas. We packed a cooler with water, lemonade, Gatorade and sandwiches so that we wouldn't have to worry about eating fast food.