Last Days of Preparation

It seems no matter how early you start preparing for a trip, the last few days leading up to GO TIME are always complete chaos.

Here’s how the idea for this trip came into being. Shannon said, “Hey, why don’t we spend a few days at Lake Erie this summer?”. The next thing you know we had three weeks worth of road-tripping planned out that included spending time at, not one, but FOUR of the great lakes.

This is not the first time a small trip turned into something much more involved. Way back in the Land Before Kids, Shannon and I were planning to take a short weekend getaway trip. We ended up in Niagara Falls!! That one was Shannon’s doing.

Needless to say this isn’t the first time a trip idea has gone from 0 to 60 in less than 4 seconds.

We wanted to share a few of the things we are doing that will hopefully make the next three weeks on the road less stressful and more enjoyable.

1. Trip Itinerary Binder (also referred to as the TIB……actually I’m the only one who calls it that) – This binder contains printouts of all our hotel and campsite confirmations, grocery lists and a daily breakdown of our activities. 
2. Entertainment Bags (for in the car) – These are ziploc freezer bags that have different sets of toys in them. We have about 10 different bags the boys can choose from. Once they choose a bag we start a 10 minute timer. After the time is up they can either switch bags with one of their brothers or choose a new bag. 
3. New Car Seat for Everett – On our last couple of beach trips Carter and Jackson would get excited after seeing something out the window and we would hear Everett say “but I can’t see”. With all the time we will be spending in the car, we decided to get Everett a higher-sitting seat. He is loving it!! 

Along with simply documenting our travels, one of our main goals with this blog is to write about the joys and challenges of traveling with kids. The first thing we do when deciding whether or not we will go somewhere is to research if it is kid-friendly or not. We hope our posts will help you determine if going to some of these same places is right for your family!