Day 25 - How to road trip with kids

So we went out of town for the Thanksgiving holiday, and due to being on the road and visiting with family, I got very far behind on blogging.  Now it is time to play catch-up.

We had about a seventeen and a half hour trip ahead of us.  We planned on leaving at 4 in the morning, and ended up pulling into the hotel parking lot at almost 10pm.  It was a looooong trip and we were all ready for it to be over.  Charlotte was already asleep, and Rory finally fell asleep about thirty minutes before we got there.

In order to survive this trip, we had a few tricks up our sleeve.  First, we have portable tv/dvd players that hook up behind the two front seats for them to watch.  We went to the library and rented out the max amount of DVDs, and these played on repeat the entire trip.  (This helps with the fighting in the backseat immensely).

We are also not above bribing.  We have a special "treat envelope" which is just a big manila envelope that is full of dollar store items.  Every hour or so that they are good, they get something out of the envelope to play with.  We had things like colored pencils and notebooks, PEZ candies, little dolls, glow in the dark necklaces, and tic tacs.  By the time they are bored with it, they only have a few minutes to go until the next one.  It works perfectly.

We have plenty of snacks available as well, so that we don't have any hunger meltdowns.  We try not to stop too much, but of course little bladders need to attended to, and quickly.  We stopped for lunch and dinner early, to avoid the rush and we made sure that we gassed up and went to the bathroom each time we stopped, to avoid any stops in between.  We did really well, and the main reason out trip took four hours longer than the GPS originally told us as we pulled out of our driveway, was due to so. much, traffic.  Ugh!

All in all, it was a pretty good trip and the kids did really well.  I definitely think it helps to be prepared and to stock up on fun things for the kids, as well as making sure they have something to distract them from the long trip (whether this is a DVD player, or travel games).