Hitting the Road

In a couple of days we will be loading up all of our junk into a rented RV and heading to my parent's house about 550 miles away.  I'd always said I wanted to rent one and head west, where it was more about the journey than the destination.  So when we started weighing our options when visiting my family, it fit the bill the best.  They don't really have room for us at their house, we are super early at getting up and going to bed, and the nearest hotel is 45min away.  To top it off, they already had an RV pad and hookups from hosting my grandfather's a number of times.

You'd think I'd be leaping around, tossing flowers, and singing with happiness at the thought of scratching an item off my bucket list.  I. am. not. I'm scared and have been combatting my anxiety with overplanning activities for the trip.  Pinterest became my enabler and I didn't look back.  If you're looking for things that will be completely overkill for a 9-10hr trip, you've come to the right place.

I made both 4yr old boys a bag of goodies to keep with them during the trip:

1. Pizza baking sheet and three containers from Dollar Tree.  I glued magnets to the bottom of the containers so they wouldn't slide.  The store was out of the regular cookie sheets, so this was the best I could do.  Turns out they fit perfectly on their laps between the arms of their car seat.  I experimented with hot gluing foam on the bottoms, but I was too lazy and didn't like the look.
2. Reusable grocery bag I had left over from the Doc McStuffins party.
3. Random toys from the dollar store.  I wrapped some, including funny socks, a pocket fan, toy helicopter, and a ball on a lanyard.
4. My homemade "I Spy" jar of rice and little items.  The container and rice are from the dollar store.  You can see my laminated answer key thing below.  The reusable fruit ice cubes and the plastic heart are dollar store buys.  The rest are foam stickers from Walmart.
   
   
5. Ignore this.  I covered it in #3 and am too tired to go back and change the picture.
6. A Super Fantastic Binder that belongs to Alex, obviously!

I managed to jam a ton of stuff into a 1.5in binder, as you can see above.

1. One of those baggies with hair gel and food coloring in it, that you draw on with a q-tip.  I put it in a 3 ring binder zipper pouch for safe keeping.
2. A bunch of sheets ripped out from the Kumon books at Costco.  I went with mazes and cutting.
3. A clear 3 ring binder pencil case full of foam and regular stickers, purchased at Walmart and Dollar Tree.
4. A clear 3 ring binder pencil case full of pipe cleaners, kid scissors, feather pen, washable crayons, and ring stamps.  Everything was from the dollar store.
5. Construction paper, pages ripped out of a truck coloring book, and a letter recognition sheet that you stamp with bingo markers.
6. A composition notebook, 3 ring pouch to put it in, and a blank white paper pad.

You don't honestly think I stopped there, do you?  I wasn't kidding when I said overboard.  Here are the supplemental materials I'll have with me, to hand out as needed.

1. I wasted a whole number to point out a reusable grocery bag, which is identical to the last one I showed you.
2. Laminated memory game cards (4).  You cover the pictures with tokens and try to find the matching ones.  I literally googled "cute clipart" and picked what I liked for a total of 10 images.
3. A gallon bag with giant foam dice (bookmarked kids dice games), paper fish with paper clips (to make a fishing game on the fly with the ball on the lanyard and a sticky backed magnet), and two small rainbow colored paper pads.
4. A giant box of crayons and colored pencils, sticky-backed foam sheets, and a zipper pouch of cheap bracelets and necklaces.
5. Large laminated cutouts of Zach and Alex (to draw on with dry erase markers), "I Spy" answer keys, and a zippered pouch with The Artist Who Painted a Blue Horse game.
6. The rest of the Kumon books, a Disney Jr coloring book, baggy of dry erase, window, bingo, and foam markers, dollar store clay, painter's tape, a stamp kit, two decks of cards, wedding bubbles, and a pouch with a foam puzzle.

Not pictured because I still need to make them are the wooden tokens for the memory cards.  I want to put magnets on the back so they stick to the pizza trays, but ran out of materials.  I also didn't show you all of the board books and toys I have for the baby.  I got him a couple of nice new ones, since he'll eat dollar store stuff.  There are also a ton of crackers, cookies, mini candy bars, and lollipops.

Two good places to find kids songs for the road are bussongs.com and kididdles.com.  Yeah, just putting that out there.

 

 On top of all of that, I'm going to have the boys color in some RV clipart I made.  I'll run a clothesline in the RV with the hours marked off on it.  Their RV's will ride from our house to grandma and pap's house via the line, to give a visual of how far we've gone and how much we need to go.  You can find more info about it here.

Before you think I'm all about the enriching activities, an iPhone, iPad, iPad mini, travel DVD players, AND the WiiU will be making the trip with us.  If things get bad, I'm willing to go full on video zombie if that's what it takes. 
 

Fear is a strong motivator.