Road Trip Survival Kit!

Each year, we tackle the 9ish hour trip to the beach! In all honesty, we have always been pretty lucky and the boys have been super travelers. This year, I thought I would try to have some activities to do besides watching movies the entire trip. Even the boys get sick of that! So, I hit Pinterest up for some ideas. After a trip to the dollar store, and some prep work we were ready to hit the road! 

We always leave at nap time in hopes that this happens....

Big brother was just too excited, so he watched Toy Story...

He proceeded to tell us..."Someone needs to tell Woody and Potato Head not to say stupid." 

When everyone was awake, we did some drawing ($1 dry erase boards and Crayola dry erase crayons)

Dylan also did coloring (colored pencils, color book, and a clipboard from hobby lobby to keep things steady)

I also made mile marker signs to let them know our stops along the way, complete with a white suburban that moved to each new "spot" along the way. Dylan thought that was pretty fun!

And of course we did a lot of "snacking"!

We always break up our trip and stay in Hattiesburg on the way down. That leaves us a short 3 hour trip to Gulf Shores on Saturday morning. And the hotel is always an adventure...especially when the baby dives into the bathtub full of water (in his pajamas and after his bath) sending Daddy to the car for extra pj's which are located in the gigantic suitcase at the bottom of the pile. Memories oh memories!

Dylan rode with my parents on Saturday morning. Caleb, my laid back baby, watched Praise baby a few times and did great 'til we hit traffic in Foley. Then we resorted to the pipe cleaner stash ($1) and made fish. We then strung fruit loops on their tails and "snacked" some more!

On the ride home, we played with glow star wands ($1)

Sticky lizards ($1 and without much sticky)

And read books (I always pack a million for my reading boys)

This happened for about an hour heading home.  Both boys. Same time. A little quiet time. 

We used almost everything I took. We did not use:

Homemade map (laminated for drawing)

I spy game (laminated as well)

I am thankful for the movie player. It passed some time for sure. They both love books with buttons and music. We took those to pass some time as well. Of course, we did lots of singing and dancing. And we stopped to stretch our legs (but not much!)

And a shout out to this guy, who drove every little mile to and from to give our family a fun beach trip!

We survived the "road" again. It wasn't always perfect. We had tears, we had fights, and we had fits, but in a messed up kinda way, I love packing in and just heading out. It definitely is a different atmosphere than our road trips "pre-boys" but our lives are fuller now and I'm thankful for that!