Road Trippin'

We loaded up the van and took our annual road trip to the beach!! We went back to Gulf Shores this year and it was beautiful--great weather, clear water, not crowded...but more on that later. For now, we will just cover the in-car portion of the trip on the way there. I may be blogging about the beach for months to come. (; Lilly was so excited to go!! For MONTHS she has been saying, "We go to the beach. On August thirteen. We go to the beach. It's open!!" I think she had been saying it for so long that she didn't ever think August "Thirteen" was coming because all week I would say we are leaving for the beach on Friday and she would reply, "No Mommy-we go to the beach on August thirteen!"

Since I knew we were going to be in the car for twelve hours split up over two days, I figured I should probably make the journey fun for the kids, too. So we spent a couple of weeks prior to the trip buying things here and there "just for the trip to the beach". We bought special movies including Dora Party Pack, Blues Clues, Bob the Builder, Kung Fu Panda, Finding Nemo, and Cars (well, I found Cars...I had bought if for my nephews to watch at our house a while back). We made our first few hours of the trip with just ring pops and the Cars movie. They are fairly used to riding in the car for up to three hours when we go visit DeDe and Mike.

Then they took short naps. I could sleep an entire 12 hour trip in a car...somehow my kids can only sleep for about 30 minutes in a car. I blame their father. (c;

I call these three pictures "the progression of Reid's nap". He starts out with a lap FULL of stuff including his paci, a pillow, "Puppy", and a blanket.

Then just a paci and a blanket.

And then when he gets good and asleep, he removes the paci...but still hangs on to it.

Then everybody wakes up in a good mood...

and hungry! So it is snack time. We made a special Wal-Mart trip just to pick out fun snacks "just for our trip to the beach". We got pringles, air heads (which Lilly calls Bumpy (?)), pringle sticks, ring pops, granola bars, gummy bears, peanut butter/chocolate bugles, frosted animal crackers, and some fruit punch.

I am a true believer (especially after this trip) that fun snacks really do make a road trip for little ones!

Lilly's favorites were the pringle sticks and the "bumpy".

Reid liked the chocolate/peanut butter bugles and the frosted animal crackers.

Matt and I LOVED these! So good!! Who would've thought???

We also brought our learning toys...the v-tech lap top,

the alphabet turtle, and we also brought our barnyard toy (the one where you pull the handle and it spends and says the name and sound of whatever animal it lands on).

We played car games like peek-a-boo, grabbing feet, and Matt and I played our usual ABC game--because road trips get long for grown-ups too.

We made a trip to Barnes and Noble before we left and found these rolling lap desks. They were a BIG hit. Kept the kids entertained for a good period of time!

I love hearing this sweet voice say, "I wanna co-yer."

And this sweet face saying, "Cheeeese!"

Plus--these were on clearance so double score. (:

We brought books...specifically lift-the-flap books and books that have buttons to push that either talk or sing songs. I get car sick reading so I didn't want to be reading any books.

Reid picked this book out at Barnes and Noble and carried it with him the entire 30 minutes we were in the store. He about had a melt-down when we had to take it away to pay for it.

And then we brought some of our quieter musical instruments.

The kids did AWESOME on the way there! We used everything we packed up for entertainment and managed to have some fun all the way there. I kept myself entertained by taking all of these pictures with my instagram app on my phone, too. (c: