The Road

Kacia- Every year for as long as I can remember, our family has made an annual vacation to Oregon. The first stage of this journey- the road trip- meant hours and hours and hours of being a child forced to sit still and entertain yourself. So, of course, an effective entertainment strategy was necessary, since you can only sleep for so long. Thus, over the years, every trip has brought a new strategy with new toys and new methods to meet my changing interests. Today we have an RV that brings new opportunities, but remember that for my earlier years, there were 4 little kids in a van. The first time I remember deciding what to do for myself, I asked for Mom and Dad to play short stories on tape so that I could look at the accompanying Disney story book. One year, I remember packing 3x as much stuff as I needed- paper dolls, a simple craft book, colored pencils + paper, a travel journal or two, tapes and a tape player, books, and a few other random things. I think I basically read, and that’s about it. The rest of my family has different things they like to do to occupy their time as well. This is the strategy they chose this time:
Dad: Drive, eat snacks, listen to Kidnapped by Robert Louis Stevenson, and try to understand ‘Gertrude’ (Lukas and I named her) the GPS system.
Mom: Bills, work on song stuff, listen to Kidnapped, input receipts, listen to music, drive when she is allowed to, do Quicken,and listen to the 60 minutes podcast.
Kacia: Watch the Lord of the Rings (extended) series with the girls (3 hours a movie), read about Child Development for school, listen to Kidnapped, and sleep.
Lukas: Sleep, listen to Kidnapped, sleep, sleep, lie somewhere trying to get to sleep, and sleep.
Kara: Read Inkheart, play on Dad’s computer, watch movies, lisen to books on tape, sleep, draw, and sleep, and sleep, and sleep (wow- that’s a lot of sleeping!!!), stare outside and do online school.
Kayley: Read the Series of Unfortunate Events (on book 8 of 13), watch LOTR, play card games, eat snacks, listen to Kidnapped, draw all kinds of stuff, sleep, play games with Levi, and do on-the-road activity books.
Levi: Make cars crash or be one big, happy family, try really hard not to sleep, fall asleep to Kidnapped, watch Napolean Dynamyte, learn about letters and make music on his little laptop, play a card game called Boom-O with his siblings, pretend that little Dinosaurs and people eat each other, have someone sit by him, eat snacks, play Cars, Math Baseball, or Thomas the Tank Engine on his Leapster (a handheld video game), and look out the window.
Notice that the list is longer as the kids get younger……..