So my mom and I will be heading across the country with 4 kids all piled into a minivan. We will be gone for 3 weeks, spending quite a bit of time in the car. If we are going to do this without losing what is left of our sanity, we have to be organized.
My mom and I spent some time last week just figuring out what will fit where in the car. We took the tent out (yes, we will be tent camping for part of our adventure) and put it in the car, as well as many other bulky items that we know will take up a lot of space. We just wanted to make sure that everything will fit, and if it didn't, what size car top carrier we needed.
It was practice packing.
I felt so weird. I know I'm kind of crazy with planning stuff, but being prepared is supposed to make this thing less crazy...right?
After packing all the bulky items in the car and figuring out where they will fit, we decided to start figuring out how we will organize the car entertainment. All of the things that I wanted to make sure that I had for the kids so they wouldn't be too bored have to be either accessible to them or me (depending on what it is, the electronics aren't going to be available to them constantly).
Okay, this is where I go in to commercial mode, but it's all true!
Clever Container has a lot of great products for organizing your car. I have a few of them that I plan on using this trip. The backseat entertainment thing is awesome because it holds a full size box of tissues, a baby wipes box (yes, I still use them even though my kids have been out of diapers for years...wow, I love saying that), a hand-held game system, games, crayons, and whatever else I want to fit in the pockets all on the back of one seat. I'm also going to be using the Swing Away to hold all of Micah's drawing papers and crayons and maps. The No Leak Litter Bag is also a must! It goes in the back with the twins. They are usually the worst offenders when it comes to garbage in the car.
Okay, I'm done with the commercial. :)
We also have 2 bags that will rotate that have a lot more entertaining activities. These will take up the space between the twins in the back seat. We have a lot of activities for them, and we want to keep each one fresh, so we will be rotating (with another bag that will hold stuff that will be surprises that come out when the bags rotate).
My mom and I have decided to take one of the storage areas for the Stow N Go seats in my van and make it into a drawer of sorts for all of our clothes instead of taking up space with luggage for everyone. Since we will be stopping at several different places along the way, we will have bags for the clothes at different stops. When we are at one of my mom's time share resorts, we will have a bag for clothes there (plus a laundry bag that we will bring in to do laundry there since many of the resorts have a washer/dryer in the rooms) and when we are in the tents we will just bring out the clothes for the next day and kind of live out of it like a drawer. This way we are eliminating the amount of bags that we bring in each stop and we don't waste space on the packaging. I'm hoping this works out well. If not, I have the food sorted in several bags and I have a collapsible bag that I'll be bringing just in case, and we will be able to reorganize if we end up hating it.
We have to bring Becca's stuff for her week with Teen Missions in a separate bag so that it's all prepared when she gets there. There are too many specific instructions about her stuff, so I don't want to mess with it until after her week there.
Sorry I didn't take pictures. I will take plenty of pictures when everything is actually packed. I'm so excited to get everything ready! I'm ready to go!
Tuesday, May 29, 2012
Wednesday, May 16, 2012
Road Trip Planning: Stuck in a Car with Four Kids!
I have awesome kids. Amazing and wonderful kids. Conversations with my kids amuse me constantly. They are some of my favorite people and I look forward to spending a lot of time with them on this road trip.
All that being said, I am still scared out of my mind about being in the car with them for extremely long periods of time.
My kids are curious, energetic, and intelligent. These are wonderful attributes when visiting places like The Huntington, which is one of our favorite family spots. The botanical gardens and library there are amazing and my kids will spend a whole day there without being bored. These attributes are wonderful when I'm looking for inexpensive things to do on our road trip, but not so great when trying to keep all that energy bottled up in a car.
All of my kids are avid readers...but all but one get car sick when they read in the car. Micah would be fine, but he reads books very quickly and I'll be working hard to keep up with him. Fortunately, my mom has a Kindle that he will be allowed to use sometimes, so we won't have to take up a lot of space in the car with all his books.
Micah is also a map guy. One trip to AAA and he is definitely set as far as maps go. I'll be making binders for the girls that have maps to color when we go into each new state and some printable games to go in there as well. License plate game and stuff like that are a must for that trip. We also have a few games that work in the car and some travel books that the kids will like.
We are borrowing portable DVD players from friends so everyone will have one of their own to watch. This will hopefully help keep the fights over what to watch to a minimum...of course, there's always the fight over which person gets to use the DVD...something will be there for them to fight about.
We will be stopping the car to eat almost every time, even though we don't plan on going eating fast food at all. I'm thinking parks and stuff like that where they can run and play for a while when we stop. We'll have balls and jump ropes for that stuff too, just in case there is no play ground where we are stopping.
Audiobooks will be coming out for evenings while driving. Probably right about when the sun goes down. Hopefully this will keep them quiet and may put the younger ones to sleep. That would be awesome.
We have the DSi for the older 2 and the twins have their Vtech Pockets. We had a regular DS, but it's broken now, so that will only work for 3 of them at a time. I don't expect that all of them will want to do everything at the same time, but I hate not having 4 of something just in case. Still, we will live, even if that means that someone is playing a game on my phone.
Music is obviously going to be very important. Becca and Micah have MP3 players, so that will be nice. Becca is into r&b and rap and my mom won't listen to that, so she will definitely be using hers.
I have a few travel games. We have a travel versions of Guess Who and Battleship. We also have a travel Scrabble. We also have a game called Rory's Story Cubes which is a game with 9 dice with pictures on the sides. A player rolls the dice and has to come up with a story that uses all the pictures. My girls love making up stories, so this one is really right up their alley.
Each child will have a journal for the trip. I look forward to seeing what they have to say if they let me read it. I'll be sharing my blogs (well, maybe not all...depends on what happens) with them, so I hope they will reciprocate, but if not, that's fine. I'll be blogging along the way, as well as Facebook. I may even get some stuff up on Youtube. I know I won't be bored.
Think I have enough stuff planned?
Me neither.
I know my kids getting bored is unavoidable, but I'm going to try really hard. Do you have any ideas?
All that being said, I am still scared out of my mind about being in the car with them for extremely long periods of time.
My kids are curious, energetic, and intelligent. These are wonderful attributes when visiting places like The Huntington, which is one of our favorite family spots. The botanical gardens and library there are amazing and my kids will spend a whole day there without being bored. These attributes are wonderful when I'm looking for inexpensive things to do on our road trip, but not so great when trying to keep all that energy bottled up in a car.
All of my kids are avid readers...but all but one get car sick when they read in the car. Micah would be fine, but he reads books very quickly and I'll be working hard to keep up with him. Fortunately, my mom has a Kindle that he will be allowed to use sometimes, so we won't have to take up a lot of space in the car with all his books.
Micah is also a map guy. One trip to AAA and he is definitely set as far as maps go. I'll be making binders for the girls that have maps to color when we go into each new state and some printable games to go in there as well. License plate game and stuff like that are a must for that trip. We also have a few games that work in the car and some travel books that the kids will like.
We are borrowing portable DVD players from friends so everyone will have one of their own to watch. This will hopefully help keep the fights over what to watch to a minimum...of course, there's always the fight over which person gets to use the DVD...something will be there for them to fight about.
We will be stopping the car to eat almost every time, even though we don't plan on going eating fast food at all. I'm thinking parks and stuff like that where they can run and play for a while when we stop. We'll have balls and jump ropes for that stuff too, just in case there is no play ground where we are stopping.
Audiobooks will be coming out for evenings while driving. Probably right about when the sun goes down. Hopefully this will keep them quiet and may put the younger ones to sleep. That would be awesome.
We have the DSi for the older 2 and the twins have their Vtech Pockets. We had a regular DS, but it's broken now, so that will only work for 3 of them at a time. I don't expect that all of them will want to do everything at the same time, but I hate not having 4 of something just in case. Still, we will live, even if that means that someone is playing a game on my phone.
Music is obviously going to be very important. Becca and Micah have MP3 players, so that will be nice. Becca is into r&b and rap and my mom won't listen to that, so she will definitely be using hers.
I have a few travel games. We have a travel versions of Guess Who and Battleship. We also have a travel Scrabble. We also have a game called Rory's Story Cubes which is a game with 9 dice with pictures on the sides. A player rolls the dice and has to come up with a story that uses all the pictures. My girls love making up stories, so this one is really right up their alley.
Each child will have a journal for the trip. I look forward to seeing what they have to say if they let me read it. I'll be sharing my blogs (well, maybe not all...depends on what happens) with them, so I hope they will reciprocate, but if not, that's fine. I'll be blogging along the way, as well as Facebook. I may even get some stuff up on Youtube. I know I won't be bored.
Think I have enough stuff planned?
Me neither.
I know my kids getting bored is unavoidable, but I'm going to try really hard. Do you have any ideas?
Tuesday, May 15, 2012
Road Trip Planning: Meals
Yesterday I spent a lot of time pouring over camping books and recipes to figure out what I could do to feed my family on our road trip. It's going to be interesting.
Traveling across the country without eating out is going to be a challenge, but I'm pretty sure we can do it...mostly because our budget won't work out otherwise. Becca's goal of raising $1000 (basically the cost of her trip if she flew there and back by herself...which wasn't going to happen) didn't quite work out, but she made it pretty close. She's about $240 off, I can't really cover that without cutting something...so we aren't eating out. Then there's the fact that I unexpectedly had to take on a new car payment because my van stopped working well enough...well, it basically took away a bit of the money we were going to save for the trip. We are cutting every corner that we can, so no eating out and no amusement parks.
Micah is gluten and casein free. This makes for a different experience in camping. That, on top of the fact that we are on an extremely limited budget made me really work on the meal plans for our 3 week adventure. While we aren't camping at every stop, much of our trip we will be in the car or in a tent. Yeah, that means camping food.
What is the first thing you think of when you think campfire food? Smores. The biggest problem with these things for the gluten free is the graham cracker. I have been baking gluten free for 7 1/2 years now and I have never made a gluten free graham cracker that tastes good. Honestly, I don't like any of the store bought ones, either. There's a couple that I deem edible, but I refuse to pay $7 for a box of graham crackers.
There are hot dogs that he can have, we will make banana boats, but there will be no Smores on our camping trip. That's kind of a bummer.
We will be having sloppy joes and chili. Hot dogs are obvious. I have tamales and sandwiches on the menu as well. The tamales are coming from home, so only for the first leg of the trip while they are still good. Tuna and spaghetti work well. There are gluten free noodles that work well for all of us. I'll probably work on hobo packets and I'm experimenting with bread on a stick as soon as I can.
I'm organizing everything and meal planning now, though I know how my mom travels, we aren't likely to stick to the plan all the way. We both like to have things planned out, but we are both flexible if things don't work the way we planned...she's more flexible than I am. I'll be the one shopping for the stuff we will have in the car for the first leg, so we will have to stick to it somewhat. I will also be getting the stock of staples that I don't know if we will be able to get along the way. I know we aren't going anywhere too terribly out of the way, but I really like a certain gluten free flour mix for things that I can't always find in every grocery store and I know we will need it. Micah's chili is pretty easy to find, but I don't want to have to look for it so I figure I'll be bringing several cans because it makes a great back up meal if something else goes wrong.
So what do you think? Do you have any more ideas?
Traveling across the country without eating out is going to be a challenge, but I'm pretty sure we can do it...mostly because our budget won't work out otherwise. Becca's goal of raising $1000 (basically the cost of her trip if she flew there and back by herself...which wasn't going to happen) didn't quite work out, but she made it pretty close. She's about $240 off, I can't really cover that without cutting something...so we aren't eating out. Then there's the fact that I unexpectedly had to take on a new car payment because my van stopped working well enough...well, it basically took away a bit of the money we were going to save for the trip. We are cutting every corner that we can, so no eating out and no amusement parks.
Micah is gluten and casein free. This makes for a different experience in camping. That, on top of the fact that we are on an extremely limited budget made me really work on the meal plans for our 3 week adventure. While we aren't camping at every stop, much of our trip we will be in the car or in a tent. Yeah, that means camping food.
What is the first thing you think of when you think campfire food? Smores. The biggest problem with these things for the gluten free is the graham cracker. I have been baking gluten free for 7 1/2 years now and I have never made a gluten free graham cracker that tastes good. Honestly, I don't like any of the store bought ones, either. There's a couple that I deem edible, but I refuse to pay $7 for a box of graham crackers.
There are hot dogs that he can have, we will make banana boats, but there will be no Smores on our camping trip. That's kind of a bummer.
We will be having sloppy joes and chili. Hot dogs are obvious. I have tamales and sandwiches on the menu as well. The tamales are coming from home, so only for the first leg of the trip while they are still good. Tuna and spaghetti work well. There are gluten free noodles that work well for all of us. I'll probably work on hobo packets and I'm experimenting with bread on a stick as soon as I can.
I'm organizing everything and meal planning now, though I know how my mom travels, we aren't likely to stick to the plan all the way. We both like to have things planned out, but we are both flexible if things don't work the way we planned...she's more flexible than I am. I'll be the one shopping for the stuff we will have in the car for the first leg, so we will have to stick to it somewhat. I will also be getting the stock of staples that I don't know if we will be able to get along the way. I know we aren't going anywhere too terribly out of the way, but I really like a certain gluten free flour mix for things that I can't always find in every grocery store and I know we will need it. Micah's chili is pretty easy to find, but I don't want to have to look for it so I figure I'll be bringing several cans because it makes a great back up meal if something else goes wrong.
So what do you think? Do you have any more ideas?
Tuesday, May 8, 2012
The Princess' New School
My daughters will be attending a new school next year. I wrote about some of the problems we have had recently at the girls' current school recently. I got so fed up with the whole mess that if something hadn't worked out with a transfer or something, I would probably have ended up homeschooling them.
Relief came in the form of a friend who offered her influence as an awesome teacher at a magnet school in our district. It's the only magnet school in our district and extremely difficult to get into...and the application time was in January.
I had been venting my frustrations to this friend because I knew that she knows the school system and my kids. I happened to be at her house for a chocolate tasting party and a few friends and I were catching up. Of course, my kids came up. It's not that I hadn't considered moving the girls to her school, I had but I knew it was difficult to get in. I didn't realize that all it took was a conversation between her and the principal at her school and I would get in.
It's amazing what can happen when you know people. I just didn't realize that I know the right people.
Today I filled out the official forms, but the principal will be walking them through the process so I'll just be waiting for the official word that is sure to come.
I'd been weighing a ton of options before this and was pretty sure that I had a handle on next year, but I didn't really have any peace about it until this option opened up. Today I just had to praise God because I knew that He had this planned all along. The peace that I was expecting as I was making my decisions for next year never came until I got the text from my friend today saying that my girls were in.
Becca is not too thrilled with the decision. I thought about not telling her for a while, but I figured that I should give her time to get used to it. She needs that kind of time to process things like this. She needs to grieve the loss of what she knows and find things to look forward to at the new school. If I sprang it on her after school let out she would not have been happy.
Becca is really just worried about losing her friends. First of all, we aren't moving so she will still have friends in the neighborhood even if she doesn't go to school with them. Secondly, she makes friends very quickly. I'm not worried about her. She has a couple of friends that have been close since Kindergarten and 1st grade, but I doubt we will lose touch with them completely because I know all the moms pretty well and we are doing stuff outside of school with them still. She will probably be going to school with them again in a couple of years for junior high anyway.
Ali and Zoe don't care yet. First of all they haven't really gotten too attached to people in their classes at school anyway. They both hang out with any kids that are willing to play with them still, so socially they are not really attached. When I told them that they would be doing performances at their new school they wanted to know if they could go now. Neither one is really shy so they won't have any trouble making friends again.
I'm so relieved. I have been so caught up in the fact that I just don't feel like my kids are safe where they are. It's not a good thing to feel. I want my babies to thrive, not just survive, you know? Things are looking up.
Relief came in the form of a friend who offered her influence as an awesome teacher at a magnet school in our district. It's the only magnet school in our district and extremely difficult to get into...and the application time was in January.
I had been venting my frustrations to this friend because I knew that she knows the school system and my kids. I happened to be at her house for a chocolate tasting party and a few friends and I were catching up. Of course, my kids came up. It's not that I hadn't considered moving the girls to her school, I had but I knew it was difficult to get in. I didn't realize that all it took was a conversation between her and the principal at her school and I would get in.
It's amazing what can happen when you know people. I just didn't realize that I know the right people.
Today I filled out the official forms, but the principal will be walking them through the process so I'll just be waiting for the official word that is sure to come.
I'd been weighing a ton of options before this and was pretty sure that I had a handle on next year, but I didn't really have any peace about it until this option opened up. Today I just had to praise God because I knew that He had this planned all along. The peace that I was expecting as I was making my decisions for next year never came until I got the text from my friend today saying that my girls were in.
Becca is not too thrilled with the decision. I thought about not telling her for a while, but I figured that I should give her time to get used to it. She needs that kind of time to process things like this. She needs to grieve the loss of what she knows and find things to look forward to at the new school. If I sprang it on her after school let out she would not have been happy.
Becca is really just worried about losing her friends. First of all, we aren't moving so she will still have friends in the neighborhood even if she doesn't go to school with them. Secondly, she makes friends very quickly. I'm not worried about her. She has a couple of friends that have been close since Kindergarten and 1st grade, but I doubt we will lose touch with them completely because I know all the moms pretty well and we are doing stuff outside of school with them still. She will probably be going to school with them again in a couple of years for junior high anyway.
Ali and Zoe don't care yet. First of all they haven't really gotten too attached to people in their classes at school anyway. They both hang out with any kids that are willing to play with them still, so socially they are not really attached. When I told them that they would be doing performances at their new school they wanted to know if they could go now. Neither one is really shy so they won't have any trouble making friends again.
I'm so relieved. I have been so caught up in the fact that I just don't feel like my kids are safe where they are. It's not a good thing to feel. I want my babies to thrive, not just survive, you know? Things are looking up.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)