Road trip prep and great choices

In addition to preparing to sell the house and pack up the house, I knew I needed to make some road trip plans for the kids. This was going to be a loooong drive. Fortunately, we were able to break it up into manageable days that weren't too long for the majority of the trip. But I still wanted it to be as comfortable and easy on the kids as possible.

The first thing to consider: FOOD. Usually when we travel by car, we grab a fast food lunch and then go out to dinner once we stop, if we aren't with friends or family. Even if you're only eating fast food lunch for a few days, it can do a number on you. Ugh. It makes me feel gross just thinking about it. Once we left Utah, we would be on our own for lodging and food. The other factor was simply finances. It's over $40 just to feed our family a less than stellar meal at McDonalds. That money on lunches alone adds up fast! Our moving truck would be using most of our relocation package so we needed to be as frugal as we could. And, though I did contemplate it, I decided it wasn't practical to have a cooler with lunch fixings every day (trying to refill it with ice each night, dragging it out of the cargo area and having to repack it, etc.) As I was mulling all of this over, I had an epiphany. I decided we should make our nice sit down meal ("nice" being relative of course) during the lunch hour. That would give us the much needed leg stretching and a decent amount of time out of the car--more so than eating at a fast food joint and hopefully a little less grease. I was SO pleased with this idea.

We would just do some quick muffins or instant oatmeal for breakfast. But that still left dinner. We had already decided to spend our nights camping beyond the Utah borders--in Kansas and Oklahoma--to save money on lodging. So it just made sense that we'd eat Mountain House dehydrated dinners in the evening. They don't take very long to cook, there's something for everyone and we wouldn't have to worry about the stress of finding a place to eat or behaving in a restaurant when we were all tired from traveling. And it fit our budget. 

We also needed snack foods for the kids. But again, because of the length of time we'd be in the car, doing nothing physically, I didn't want the kids to have a bunch of junk. 

So great choice #1) everyone would have a reusable bottle and we would drink water only. This not only saved money but significantly cut down on the sugar intake. Jared and I already had our cool stainless steel ones, so I bought new ones for the kids that look like these, with leak-proof spouts that flip up with a push of the button. Jake had one more suited to athletics.

We had a jug we filled with ice and water and that was our traveling beverage. No sodas, no juice, no milk (that would get nasty in the heat). Just good old water. It's such a small thing, but I think it made a huge difference.

Great choice #2) making "better-for-you" snack bags for each of us. I actually had forgotten everything I put into these bags so I asked the kids at dinner the other night if they remembered. Jake rolled his eyes, I thought because it had been so long and he couldn't remember, but not so. He said they were so healthy, how could he forget :) Mission accomplished. In sandwich baggies, I packed popcorn, veggie straws, apple cinnamon straws, dry cereal (Honey Comb) and goldfish. In addition, they each had a small snack bag with some teddy grahams, mini nutter butters or chips ahoy cookies. Those were their splurges! I also included a bag of grapes for each of us as well as whole apples and bananas for those who wanted them. Jared and I also had trail mix and plantain chips. Truthfully, no one actually finished all of their snacks by the end of the trip, which is okay with me. They ate when they were hungry, not just because the food was there. I simply refilled the bags that needed it in the evenings from the bigger bags of food I had brought along.

Great choice #3) purchasing sunglasses for the kids. Even though our suburban has tinted windows in the back, the sun can still be glaringly bright. And we were about to take our kids to a place where they'd never seen the sun that intensely before. The cost of sunglasses adds up too, but I don't regret giving the kids some relief in the car, when, while buckled up tightly, they wouldn't be able to hide from the brightness of the sun. 

Not knowing of the amazing travel bags that Mrs. Hanzel was creating for the kids, I had put together a travel journal for each of them. I used the ideas from this post on Our Best Bites to get me started. I did not make it as fancy or stocked with supplies as Kate did. My kids had a paper folder with the 3 prongs in the middle. And a pencil. I included the Postcard Passport page, the map of the US to track our travels, and the Road Trip Scavenger Hunt page. I wanted my kids to be able to document how they felt each day, write what they saw, etc. Because of their ages, I wanted more of a journal prompt (for the benefit of Karcyn and Calvin) than just a plain sheet of paper. I found this post from We3Travel and used the two interior pages she included. I printed enough for each of my four older kids to have the two pages each day. Then I headed over to this post from Six Sisters' Stuff to round out the folder. I liked their License Plate game card better--it had pictures of the actual license plates from each state. They have a LOT of fun, creative ideas too, however with 5 kids and a large span of ages, they weren't all practical for us. 

But I found just what I was looking for near the bottom of the list. #44 is "Road Trip Behavior Clips" and the link takes you to this post by Random Thoughts of a Super Mom. The concept is that each child has their own clothes pin that you slip onto the passenger's visor at the front of the car. If someone whines, screams, cries, fights, is rude, or makes any other poor choice, the clip comes down. The children who have clips that are still up when the car makes the next stop, have earned a treat. I liked that idea a lot, but had to adapt it a bit. First of all, my clips would not be fancy. We just needed functional. (I wrote their names on the clips in different colored markers). Also, we were not planning to stop very often (for gasoline only), and I felt like, considering the distances we'd be going, the kids needed immediate feedback. There was another idea below this one about getting tickets after every 30 minutes of driving, so I just combined the two. We set a timer for 30 minutes. Those children whose clips were still up when the alarm sounded, would earn a ticket (purchased from the Dollar Store). After writing their names on the back, I'd put them in their own personalized ziploc bag. If a child had behaved in such a way that their clip was removed, then the clip stayed down for the remainder of the 30 minutes. However, they got to reset themselves with the timer and the clip would go up again for the next 30 minute increment. The following is what the kids could "purchase" with their tickets: 

2 tickets=1 quarter

3 tickets=2 quarters

4 tickets=snack from Sister Tawzer's bag

5 tickets=20 minutes on the ipad

They kids could cash in their tickets at any stop for money to get a snack or treat or they could save them to cash in later. I brought along a couple rolls of quarters to pay the kids as needed.

Before we left, I was wondering if I doomed myself to a fate worse than death by committing to managing tickets every 30 minutes over five days of driving. But I have to say, it wasn't bad or tedious at all. It's not like I was busy doing anything else, really! And I'm thrilled to report that each child (JJ-age 2-was exempt) ages 14, 11, 8, and 6 lost their clip only ONCE (most of them the first day) for the entire move and that was it! Whether it was the extrinsic motivation of the tickets and quarters or having their name on display for all to see, I'm not sure. But this was definitely great choice #4. We are absolutely using this method again!