I am in an empowering mood today. A lot of challenging things have come my way lately and in order to avoid being swallowed up I have begun the habit of waking up in the morning with game face on ready to hit the ground running. So today’s DIY is about knowing you can do something even though it seems challenging. Or DIYWFOAC -Do It Yourself Without Freaking Out and Crying.
I have started planning our family vacation, or “trip” as I call it. Because, let’s face it, vacations are relaxing and traveling with small kids is not. This trip I am planning involves a lot of driving (cue nightmare). Unless you kids are robots or cardboard cut-outs, you will have some challenging moments. But it is really not that bad if you are armed with some ideas. I will share some things I learned to do on a road trip that will hopefully relieve some of the planning stress and the endless hours of “are we there yet?” “she is looking at me” “I have to pee”.
1. Pack each kid a travel bag with activities and items such as coloring books, toys, games, journals, small goodies, and snazzy sunglasses.
2. Have a small ice chest handy packed with snacks and drinks. Add some fun snacks that the kids don’t normally get.
3. Food will be all over the car so have a trash bag handy. You can give the kids their own placemat to catch messes or use as a drawing table. You don’t have to be fancy but these personalized placemats are cute and creative from Frecklebox. They can be used in the car or at home.
3. Play road trip games such as I Spy, License Plate Game, Who are they? Real Simple has some great ideas.
4. If your vehicle does not already have one, bring a portable DVD player with headphones for the kids so you don’t have to listen to singing animals because there is really nothing worse than The Chipmunks version of, well, anything. There are headphones that do not exceed a certain volume so your kids don’t go deaf so you know when they are really ignoring you.
4. Plan to stop every hour to eat, use restroom, and stretch legs. Then you will be so happy you made it an hour and five minutes without stopping.
Happy traveling!