3 family road trip essentials

It’s Friday night and we just put the kids in bed.

I’d like to relax, wind down, and maybe even get in some extra sleep.

Instead, my husband and I are busy collecting items from around the house to make tomorrow’s day-long road trip as smooth as it can go.

I just tip-toed to the loft between the kiddos’ bedrooms and pulled this collection of videos.  Deep down, while I felt horrible that I accidentally opened a Christmas gift from one of my sister’s early (we order from Amazon and so does she… didn’t notice a difference in the box until the contents and then it was too late), I am thrilled to have two new cartoon seasons along for this trip.

At this point, big brother and little sister know we are going to a special place for dinner tomorrow night… a place that is far away.  We will tell them in the morning the day’s agenda and focus on how exciting dinner will be.

The past 7 months of trips have included these 3 ingredients of success:

Portable DVD player
Makes the time go by and the handy headphones allow one-kid listening when his/her sibling gets out of line.

Costco Travel has some of the lowest deals on rental cars.

A Carrot
We learned early on, from the advice of a co-worker, to give the kiddos something to look forward to. Sometimes this is getting ice cream after so many movies or going to Legoland in Kansas City or… for tomorrow… getting dinner at a restaurant where your food is delivered on a train instead of via a person.

The rest of our packing list contains things like this.

My friend, Greg, convinced me years ago that from one trip to another the base packing list stays the same.  As a result, we now have a Google doc packing list.  Items vary when we make the trip all in one day versus breaking up the trip by staying with friends in Kansas City.  This trip a day trip worked out best for our schedules.

We’ll hit the road around 7/7:30AM, meet the bio family at 1PM, pick the kiddos up at 4PM, get dinner the drive back, and hopefully be back in our own beds by 9:30/10:00PM.

Prayers appreciated.

Published 12/18/2014