Me, Hailee and Jake just had the opportunity to go down to Arizona with my little brother (or maybe I invited myself when he announced he and Jen were going...?). Ty had to skip out since he just started a new job, so we missed him, but we did have a great time. My mom and dad ended up coming as well and we stayed at Blake and Kaleena's house with their two kids, so it was quite a full house! I was planning on flying down because that's, of course, my initial instinct, but prices were outrageous and I was starting to think that maybe a road trip would be fun, so we decided to drive it. Now seriously, after planning for this road trip, I deserved a mom of the year award. You can't even begin to imagine how much crap/stuff I brought for them to do! It really was a blast to plan though. I got a bunch of ideas out of my handy dandy 80's "manual" that I've mentioned in previous posts and went to town. Unfortunately I think I was so caught up in "rolling out" all of the activities on the drive that I literally did not get one picture from the actual road trip. How sad is that?
First I made these finger puppets out of gloves. I know, how awesomely lame are these?! Don't look too close, but man, the kids loved them. Out of the nine fingers, you can tell the stories of "The Three Little Pigs", "Goldilocks and the Three Bears", and "Little Red Riding Hood". I think I'm going to add a boy on the extra thumb and then I could do "Hansel & Gretel" (you
know, Goldilocks serving as Gretel).
I bought a really cute book of fairy tales and recorded myself reading each of the stories. I even rang a bell when it was time to turn the page. Ty then did his magic and put them on Hailee's IPOD. She loved listening to the stories and following along in her book.
I sewed some new pillow cases for each of them and bought them some mini pillows just for the road trip. Hailee got to decide which of them would get which colors. The main purpose for them was to attach to the underside of a masonite board which they would put on their laps and it would give them a little "table" to use for coloring in their coloring books or whatever else. When they were done, they could take the pillow out and sleep on it. Obviously this isn't my picture, but this is what I could find online so you get the idea. Now Hailee asks for the lap board every time we get in the car.
Another fun thing I thought I would do is create some felt board activities. When I started looking around online to figure out exactly how to do that, I came across these darling (already made) felt boards. Sometimes, that is just the best way to go...I got the farm one for Jake and the princess one for Hailee. They loved them.
Of course we had DVD players. We bought some really handy ones that you can hook together to either play the same movie at the same time or a different movie on each player. That's a required item for a 12+ hour drive. I bought a few movies they'd never seen before. But I was really impressed with myself when I thought to hook up Hailee's Leapfrog Clickstart computer to the DVD players so she could play her (educational) video games in the car! And of course the lap board came in really handy for that! It was such a novelty for her to be able to do this in the car.
Grandma Gibson also came through for the kids. She wasn't coming on the trip, but sent each of them with a bag full of goodies and toys. They had treats, coloring books, crayons, a new book for Jake, some tiny dolls for Hailee and other fun things for them to play with on the road.
All in all, it was a really fun road trip. I was very skeptical about the whole thing (especially with an 18-month-old in tow...especially one that doesn't like to be in cars and never sits still for more than a minute), but it really turned out to be great. The kids were both wonderful and we barely had enough time on the road to fit in all the activities I had planned (not that I was wishing for more time or anything). Jake started to fuss a few times right before lunch and right before we got there. He'd pull on his car seat straps and say "gee out, gee out", but overall, he really did better than I expected. Hailee was really good and started to think it was funny when she'd ask if we were there yet since she knew we weren't. We are going to have the opportunity for a road trip again in June to St. George this time. That one should be a breeze after this loooong one! Also, I'll post about the actual vacation soon. Thanks to all of you who actually made it through this entire post for listening to my rambling! I guess it's not just in person that I do that...:) Hopefully you got a few ideas out of this that you can use. Happy traveling!!
There were lots of animals to see.
The only food they had was hand held (no utensils or anything), which was interesting for trying to feed kids. They had these humongous Turkey legs, sausage skewers and corn on the cob. Look at those turkey legs! 
We could not peel Jake off of this corn on the cob. He literally stood in this position for 20 minutes straight while Bryce held the corn for him. He is actually standing up, but leaning into the corn for balance. He didn't even take his mouth off it to swallow and chew! Bryce was such a good sport!
They had rides too. This is Jake's first official ride on anything like this. He looks a little nervous, huh? He did pretty well and his sister took good care of him.
Poor Hailee was doing ok the first part of the day, but started getting really ornery mid-day. I thought it was unusual because she rarely acts like that anymore at her age, but I thought maybe it was because of all the commotion, our 12-hour drive the day before and just being off schedule. But when she first turned down a walk through the fairytale castle and then fell asleep in the stroller in the middle of the festival (and she hasn't taken a nap since she was 3), I knew something was wrong. Poor little thing...
It turned out she had some kind of 24-hour flu bug. I'm glad it didn't last our whole trip. I felt bad that she had to miss out on a few things because she was feeling so awful. She did have a great time most of the day though and it was a lot of fun to do something so unique.
