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It seems to have become a bit of a new year tradition for us to pack the car and say goodbye to the snow as we drive to South Carolina.
Yes, that’s twenty-one hours in the car. With two kids. And, we’ve been doing it for the past four years.
This year, we loaded my phone with movies to help pass the time for the kids, but, to our surprise, they watched one movie in twenty-one hours. To my horror, that left more than nineteen hours that I needed to fill.
It was a last-minute trip this year so I didn’t have time to do much planning. We played car bingo which the kids had a love/hate relationship with (we’re still working on patience and delayed gratification). The front-seaters got a little tired of the ‘when are we going to see a dooooog?? When are we gonna see an airplaaaane??’ whining from the back-seaters. I found a fantastic website for mazes and games that kept the kids busy as well as introducing Jackson to the world of Sudoku. Everyone’s favourite car activity though was a little something I threw together just before we were leaving. I’m a big fan of imagination so I made a few pages with random shapes for the kids to turn into art. They loved doing the same sheet over and over to come up with something new each time. One of the sheets had a circle and stars at the top which I was sure would be turned into a moon but in the four versions they did, never once did those stars become part of a night sky.
We had a week away in a beautiful place where the weather was perfect. We saw nature, ate well (honey almond ice-cream = going back next year ) and played, yet, some of our favourite memories are of the drive. There’s something to be said for being stuck in a confined space together with no choice but to make the best of it. Okay, to be honest, the drive home is never fun. There’s nothing new and exciting to look forward to at the end so everyone’s nerves are a little more prickly (yes, by ‘everyone’ I mean ‘me’). For the last five hours of every drive home my husband and I commit to flying next time…
Thank you so much for the idea of the shapes on paper! We are leaving for Florida in early May (we are flying as we are just not brave enough to drive that distance with the kids yet!). Both kids love drawing and this will definitely keep them occupied on the plane. Great, great idea!!!
Thanks! I hope it works for you. Being with the kids on a plane makes me so much more nervous than the car! We haven’t been brave enough to try flying yet, we’re thinking next year.
You are so creative! I love that idea, of putting simple shapes on paper and seeing what the children come up with. Brilliant. I will have to try that one for sure. How do your kids draw in the car? Do you have a little lap table for them or something?
We take a lot of long car rides, too. 10 hours each way to see the grandparents every few months. It is well worth it, and in between they come up here. But it is a lot for little ones to last that long in such a confined space, and all buckled into their car seats. Things were better when we were young. My sister and I used to lounge around on the floor — much more freeing than today’s safety standards.
We bought a little lap desk for each of them and it worked out really well for us. They used it for everything from drawing to making snacks and playing with their dolls / cars easier.
It’s so true – I remember my sister and I laying across each other making use of every square inch of the backseat. Ah, those were the days.