Part 1 How I spent my summer vacation: A guide to traveling with kids

This is the first of a three-part series on traveling with kids.  Come back next week for part 2!
Today's post is all about ideas for how to streamline the preparation before you even leave your house.

When I was a kid, road trips were always the highlight of the summer.  We'd make a bed in the back of the station wagon, and my sisters and I would lay back there for hours watching cars go by.  Looking for out of state license plates.  Counting cows.  Trying to get truck drivers to honk at us.  The list of things to do was endless. And when we finally got there (it never really mattered where "there" was) we were thrilled to sleep in new beds, explore new places, and meet new friends. 

Sure there were problems.  No road trip is complete without them. We had flat tires. We fought. We got lost. We got sick. When I was seven we drove from Washington to California, and when I got out of the car I passed out in the gravel and tore my knee open.  I loved those scars!  They were my Disneyland scars!  Then there was the time we went to Yellowstone, and my baby sister came down with the chicken pox.  We still talk of how cute she was walking around the cabin with her little bare bum covered in calamine lotion.  And I am certain my siblings and I yelled, "She's on my side of the seat!" more than a time or two.  Looking back though, we always remember the fun and easily gloss over the drama.

So if we loved car trips so much as kids, why do we dread them as parents?  Why do we stress so much about keeping our kids happy and entertained?  We just do. Before each big trip I use to  have a tendency to go into total freak-out mode! There is so much to do and of course I thought I was the only one in the house smart enough to do any of it. So I'd stomp around the house like an angry ogre taring apart closets looking for stray sneakers and yelling at kids to stop unpacking all the car toys!  My husband would quietly reassure the kids, "Don't worry, your nice mommy will be back as soon as we are on the road. 'Angry Mommy' is just here to do all the packing for us."  I tried to argue that I wasn't angry, I was just focused, or busy, or tired, or.... okay, so I was a little angry.

And then I decided to chill out.  Want to know how to have a stress free trip? Stop stressing out about it.  Too simple? Kind of. But not really.  I use to think that if I didn't pack perfectly that the trip would be a disaster.  What if we ran out of diapers? What if we forgot to pack our swim suits?  What if I forget the car toys and the kids go crazy?  Well it turns out, none of these things are life ending events.  Most packing problems can be solved by a quick trip to the nearest Walmart (yes it's a waste of money, but it is manageable). And a lot of things you think you need top pack, aren't actually necessary. I forget to pack a razor or hair gel for my husband EVERY TIME we travel. So guess what? He has a scruffy face and really puffy hair on every vacation we take. 

And when it comes to making sure kids are happy and entertained, you can relax about that too. Growing up we didn't have TVs in our car. Or a DS or an MP3 or an iPad. And the speed limit was lower so it took a lot longer to get anywhere.  But we survived. And we had fun! So stop worrying about entertaining your kids every second of the day, and let them learn to entertain themselves.

So once you've realized that the key to having a relaxing vacation is to simply relax, you can go ahead and try a few ideas of things that we do on road trips to keep the kids happy and us adults sane.

This summer my husband and I took our five kids (and my MIL) to the coast.  It is about an eight hour drive from our house.   We planned to be gone a full seven days, leaving right after church at noon on Sunday and coming home late Saturday night. Two days on the water, one day at the zoo, two days in downtown Seattle, and a stop at the capitol in Olympia on the way home.

Packing

The first step to a successful trip is packing.  I usually have several types of bags.  Clothes, food, bathroom stuff, toys, grown up stuff (wallets, cell phones, cameras, maps, etc.), and a diaper bag (if we have a baby at the time).  Depending on the type of trip, there will always be other specialized bags (like beach bags or camping bags)

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If we are planning to get in late the first night, I always pack a small overnight bag with jammies (and medicine if needed) for everyone.  It's the last thing I put in the car when we load up, so it's always on top, that way when we get there we can just grab the bag and go in to bed.

Clothes

After the overnight bag, comes the clothes bags.  Chances are you are going to need more than one bag full of clothes.  But does everyone get their own bag, and if not, who shares with whom?  I try to divide up suitcases either based on who will be sleeping in the same room, or who is less likely to fight.  If it's a super quick trip, and everyone only needs a change or two of clothes, then I may pack a single back pack for each child filled with just their own clothes.  Usually we need a lot of clothes, so that means we need a lot of suitcases.  On a typical trip we pack one bag for grownups, one bag for big kids, and one bag for little kids.

When it's time to pack, I lay out all the suitcases in one room, and then post a list of what each person needs to find (like 5 shirts, 4 shorts, 1 jeans, 2 jammies, etc.).  Then I have the kids run and fetch the items on the list, and I pack them into the appropriate bags.

                         

Okay, time out, I'm about to reveal one of my many, um, quirks.  I LOVE matching.   So when I say that I tell my kids to go get 5 t-shirts, the truth is I say, "I need you to get one navy shirt, one yellow shirt, one red shirt, one brown shirt, and one green shirt."  Each day of our trip has a color assigned to it.  Weird!  I know. *sigh*   I do this for many reasons.  The first reason is safety (I list this reason first because it makes me sound more normal, but it's not really my main reason).  If everyone is wearing the same color, it is easier to find the kids in a crowd.  And if one of the kids were to ever go missing, I could easily point to one of my other children and say to the police officer, "I am missing a six year old boy that is dressed just like this." See what a great idea this is?  Safety first!  Okay, so my other reason is that I want us to look good in pictures.  So I make sure we match each other and we match the location we are going.  A framed picture of the kids at the beach will look best if the kids are all dressed in blue.  And a little boy in a brown or green shirt will look so much better standing next to a tree than one in a busy red striped t-shirt. Right?

In each suitcase, I also pack an empty pillow case.  As we start using up our clothes, we put the dirty ones in the pillow case to keep them separate from the clean ones.   If we will have the opportunity to wash clothes while we're traveling, then I will certainly cut back on how much we pack.  The only reason I typically plan to do laundry on a trip is if we simply don't have room for the amount of clothes we need to pack, or if one of us doesn't own enough pairs of underwear to last the duration of the trip.  If I plan to do laundry, I always bring along my own laundry soap.  You don't want to be wasting $2 a load buying soap at the campground Laundromat. Just put one scoop in a baggie.  If you plan on doing more than one load, pack multiple baggies each with just enough soap for one load.  Also pack quarters because you never know if you'll have access to a change machine when you need it. 

I like to pack all the jackets in their own separate bag to be left in the car at all times.  Chances are if one person needs a coat, everyone will want a coat, so we keep them together so we can grab and go when we need to.

Most trips deserve two pairs of shoes.  I always tell my kids what I want on their feet when we get into the car (ie sandals or sneakers), and everyone puts their  other pair together in a bag.  That way I'm sure we have the shoes we need.  It feels a little control-freak-ish, but it saves so many headaches down the road.

If we have "special" clothes like swimsuits or Sunday clothes, I pack them all together in one bag so that they are easy to find when we need them.  That way, if we find time to swim, we can just grab the swim bag and go, and we don't have to waste time sending each person to dig through their suitcase and find their things.

The last bag of clothes I pack are our emergency clothes.  This is a bag of clothes that stays in the car at all times and never gets unpacked during the trip unless we have an actual wardrobe emergency.  These "emergencies" include things like falling in a puddle, wetting your pants, or spilling a drink.  We have never gone on a trip and NOT used our emergency clothes. Accidents always happen.

Food

I always pack tons of car snacks.  Restaurant and gas station food is expensive. So I like to buy snacks for cheap at the grocery store instead.  We used to keep a big box of snacks in the front of the car and I would pass them out to the kids at my leisure.  Unfortunately this led to constant eating (and overeating!). If one kids gets hungry and asks for a snack, then everyone wants the same snack whether they are hungry or not! So I started packing everyone their own snack bag.  When kids control their own snacks, they eat more slowly and save them until they are truly hungry, instead of just eating because everyone else is.  Plus I don't have to listen to whining kids complaining that someone else ate the last of the Cheetos.

So what kind of snacks?  A water bottle (that can be refilled), a sandwich, crackers, cookies, popcorn, apple slices, string cheese.  Basically anything not sticky.  And throwing in something they aren't use to getting (like a Go-gurt or a Lunchable) is always a nice treat.  You can buy a bunch of individual bags of chips or crackers, but a box of generic gold-whales will divide into little baggies for about a third of the price.

I also pack meals for the trip.  Eating out gets really expensive, and after a few days everyone will start feeling sick.  So I pack a cooler full of lunch meat and cheese, so we can make sandwiches for lunch any day we want.  My kids (and me!) are hungry the second they pop out of bed, so waiting to go out for breakfast is not a great option for us.  So I also pack a jug of milk and some cereal for a quick breakfast.  On our trip this summer, we stopped at the grocery store multiple times to refill our cooler.  It's cheaper and healthier, and as a bonus, kids can buy souvenirs at the grocery store for a lot cheaper than you'll typically find them in a gift shop.

Next week we'll focus on how to keep costs down (and sanity in check!) while doing the actual traveling.

Marcia