Over the River and Through the Woods (or, Roadtrips with a Large Family)

We’re getting ready to go visit my parents for a few weeks, in preparation for my little sister’s wedding (yay, hooray!). However, my parents live a bit far from us – almost 10 hours by car, to be exact. When the kids were little and there were less of them, we made the drive at night for simplicity’s sake. They’d sleep, one of us would sleep, and the other would drive, switching off when needed. However, now that the kids are older and able to amuse themselves and interact, we take the drive by day and enjoy the roadtrip!

In preparation, I’ve compiled this:

No, its not a bunch of Tupperware! (although it is a lovely, large bag I received for hosting a Tupperware party, score!) Inside the bag are all of our “Roadtrip Necessities”. Believe it or not, it contains everything we'll need to stay occupied for the entire trip! See:

OK, that grocery bag is the snack bag, here’s what the inside looks like without the snack bag:

In case you need some ideas for entertaining a large family (or, even a small family) on a roadtrip, I’ll explain everything I’ve got in there.

Each child has a clipboard, with their name written on it:

Attached to the clipboard, as you can see, is a baggie with crayons, pencils, and a wipe off marker.

Underneath the baggie, there are two blank maps – one for coloring in all of the states we’ll travel through, and the other for the License Plate Game. Which, if you don’t know it, you've really been missing out! I’ll go ahead and explain – everytime you see a license plate from a different state, you color in the state that license plate is from. Whoever gets their whole map colored (or the most states colored by the end of the trip)… wins!

We don’t actually give out prizes for winning, but if you have a husband or any male children at all, you know that just the right to be able to say “I won!” gives them immense satisfaction. Oh, and its good geography practice, too! ;-)

Underneath the maps are 8 laminated Car Bingo boards. That’s what the wipe-off marker is for, because the lamination allows them to be reused again and again easily! I got these from a great car trip website called MomsMinivan.com. Each Bingo Board is numbered so that no one accidentally uses the same Bingo Board as someone else at the same time.

Also on the clipboards is some blank paper just for coloring or writing or whatever else one wants to do with it, except for spitballs. Those have been outlawed in the car, for good reason.

Also in the bag is several packs of pipe cleaners. Pipe cleaners are by far the BEST long road trip activity ever. Really! I was AMAZED at how occupied they kept the children the first time we brought some along. They played quietly with them for over an hour! Even Nathan (2 years old) can have fun with them, and there are no small pieces to have to keep track of! They all know to look forward to pipe cleaners on our road trips, now – and I save them for moments of desperation ;-)

Next, we have the ever-popular Mad Libs. This will be our first trip to play Mad Libs, because until now most of the kids wouldn't have played it very well. Now, most of them can!

Finally, there are several books on tape. When we traveled at night, we started The Lord of the Rings Trilogy on tape (although some of us have read them in their entirety several times), but we haven’t finished the entire thing, so we have those again. Isaac insisted it was a tradition, so thankfully, they were readily available at the Library. Also along is the book “Hans Brinker” which was one we started as a read-aloud for school but never finished, so it will be nice to hear the end while we travel.

As for snacks, I’ve got several “dry” goodies and a few cold ones that will be kept in a small cooler. Here are the dry snacks:

Each person has two granola bars, a baggie of pretzel twists, and a baggie of goldfish. The teething bars are for the baby, obviously. I forgot to get trail mix this time, but that's also something we usually have, as well as dried apricots.

Cold snacks include 4 oz containers of Stoneyfield Yogurt and Cheese sticks. We’ve also got a bulk supply of small bottled waters, as well. Our hope is that will prevent us from having to stop too frequently for junky fast food, although we traditionally start out our drive with a breakfast from Chik-Fil-A (which doesn’t quite count as junky, does it?).

With the extra effort I put into preparing for our trip, our roadtrips are so much less stressful! They’re actually pretty enjoyable, with lots of games and fun conversation, and yes, even some quiet moments here and there. Its well worth it!

With that, I will be saying farewell for now. I’m not sure how much time I’ll have to do any blogging while we’re away, but I’ll be back sometime next year! Have a blessed New Year!