Traveling Mercies

In case you're wondering how (or why) we travelled through multiple states for multiple weeks with multiple children, here's a little insight into our daily drives.

Luke - Driver of Great Focus and Minimal Patience For Other Drivers Who Go Slowly In Front of Him For No Apparent Reason.

Melanie - Navigator Extraordinaire Who Loves Maps But Loves-Hates GPS.

Leah - Traveling Compadre Who Loved Her Travel Binder* But Refuses To Nap Even When Extremely Exhausted.

John - Traveling Man Who Dresses Only in Dodger "Uniforms" And Tries to Refuse To Nap Except When ... (Snore.)

Noelle - Traveling Babe Who Signs "All Done" When She Wants Out Of The Car Seat And Can Only Be Kept Completely Quiet By A Regular Rotation of Fruit Leathers.

Traveling is definitely different with kids. By all accounts, this trip could have been called "The Great Northeastern States Playground, Ice Cream, and Pool Tour." Luke would grumpily add "Bathroom" to that title. And the top two items on my list of what to bring next time are stain remover and ear plugs. But all-in-all we had a great time and would do it again in a heartbeat.

* The Travel Binder is an idea I got from the smart folks over at www.activitybags.com. I figured I could throw one together myself. It's basically a white binder filled with plastic sheet covers containing printed activity sheets and a pocket with dry-erase markers and a rag. They can draw/write on the sheet covers and then erase and do the activities over again.

The activity sheets that I put in were:

A map of the Northeast states so they could follow along our route

A calendar of the month of July so they could mark off the days/write in the places as we go

A travel bingo card (found through an internet search)

Tracing guides for numbers and letters (capital and lowercase)

A blank sheet to draw a picture with lines below to write the story

A clock with no hands so they could draw them in when they ask what time it is (again)

A coloring page with a memory verse

A stick figure for Leah to draw outfits on

And a baseball field for John (which he spent a majority of his time on)

And I have ideas for the next trip from a free e-book from the genius mom over at www.carschooling.com.

We also listened to Karen and Kids podcasts, played the "I'm thinking of a..." game, sang, attempted to do a little daily devotion, read, played with Wikki Stix and ate a lot of snacks.

So that's how we roll. Stay tuned for more on Maine.