Car trip with kids: mom hacks

Good morning my friends, how are you and how was your weekend?

Ours was great. On Saturday we actually rested, we waited for my husband to come back from a work trip and spent most of the day inside and in our yard. On Sunday we had a lot of fun at an event at a local farm: we saw the animals, did some activities, listened to music and ate a lot of snacks! The kids had their faces painted, they love it!!

I am happy because it looks like the nicer, warmer weather is finally coming here and because in the last week no one got sick. I just have to still keep an eye on Platone and make sure that he doesn`t do crazy things… Very hard for him!

Today I wanted to go back in time a little and talk to you about our car trip to Montreal. Soon I will share with you what we did there and some nice pictures that we took, but I am still working on them, so I was thinking about sharing my tips about car trips with kids. We are not really used to take very long trips with our kids in the car, essentially because if we have to go somewhere, we always fly there. The second reason is that I don`t really enjoy long car trips, I get very bored, so I`d rather take a flight! Anyway, this time we decided to drive from home to Montreal, for a total of five/ five and a half hours and we used a couple tricks to make the drive enjoyable and not too stressful for us and the kids:

1-LEAVE EARLY IN THE MORNING:

The first thing we did and which ended up being the right choice was deciding to leave early in the morning, and by early I men 5.30 am, not crazy early! We got ready and loaded the car and then woke the kids up and put them in their car seats in their pajamas, we didn`t even change them. So for the first 2/3 hours they kept quiet because they were tired and took some naps. By the time the three of them woke up completely we decided to stop at a gas station, where we took them to the bathroom and changed them. We got some small treats for breakfast and went back on the road.

2-PACK A LOT OF SNACKS AND TREATS:

This is my number 1 trick whenever we travel, it doesn`t matter if we are driving or flying, I always pack a ton of snacks, because I know that my kids love to eat and they love snacks. I always get some new things that I am sure they will like, especially chips and popcorns, that they usually don`t eat at home, so as soon as they see them, they get very excited because they know it is a treat!! This time I packed some Teddy Soft baked snacks, Pirate booties (my kids favorites), popcorns, trail mix (which I got from Trader Joe`s, Alessandro really likes them), fruit bars, nuts, chocolates (kit kats and m&ms), animal crackers, cheese it, Goldfishes. I had so many snacks that they lasted for the whole trip (drive to Montreal, drive back and three days there). My tip is to not give your kids juices, because they could get very messy: my kids are not able yet to hold the boxes gently, so they will squeeze them and spill the juice every time. So I decided to bring their water bottles and they were totally fine with them!

3-PACK SMALL TOYS WRAPPED IN PAPER:

Before our trip I went to the dollar section at Target and got some little toys that were appropriate for the car drive, because during a flight it is easier to help the kids with anything they need, but when in the car, it is harder to reach everyone. So I found some little coloring books and crayon sets for the twins, Aurora had a block of white paper and markers, I got some dinosaur stickers for the boys and mermaid stickers for Aurora, I found some little erasers with different shapes and some little kits with cardboard shapes with small holes in them and colorful strings: the kids just have to pass the strings through the holes. My kids loved this last `game` and played for a while with it, it kept them busy for more than an hour, so I would say that it was a success!

And this is all that took to keep them entertained during our way to Montreal. On the way back we decided to leave just after lunch, so the kids all slept through most of the trip. When they woke up we stopped at a gas station and had dinner there and then they just entertained themselves for the last couple hours, I have to say I wasn`t expecting them to be so good!

Ok my friends, I hope you will be able to use some of these tips for your next car trip.

I hope you have a wonderful week and I will meet here on Friday.

Anna