Large family | Traveling with children

     With each child addition, traveling has gotten increasingly difficult. So I've had to come up with ways to make it as easy as possible. And I have come to the conclusion that stopping every 2-3 hours is a must when you're traveling long distance with children, especial if one of them is a nursling.


     So what's the car on the string deal? Well, I saw the idea on pinterest many years ago and have used it several times. The idea is, you print out a car, stretch a string across the car, mark the string in increments (hours or miles), then your children move the car with each marker passed. Simple and entertaining. Stops them from asking, "Are we there yet?" And "How much longer?" gagillian times. I happen to have pretty good photoshopping skills, so I Googled for an image of our vehicle (Ford Transit) and photoshopped heads into it, to represent us. Love it!

     For our recent trip to Minnesota, before starting the drive, I also decided to plan our stops ahead of time. I wanted to look ahead and see if there were any cool places to stop,  to keep everyone engaged and excited. I downloaded the roadtrippers app and was able to do that with ease!

     Next, I wanted to prepare some things for the chickadees to do in between stops. My boys are allowed to play on their phones while we travel, but I really did not want them to spend 10+ hours playing video games.. so the day before we left, we went to Dollar Tree and I let them pick 5 toys each. I didn't make them wait a certain time between getting a new toy to play with, as I've seen others do, I let them play with it all the whole way.

     We really enjoyed sightseeing places we have never stopped to see before. In the 15 years of driving back and forth between Minnesota and Missouri, we had never stopped at these places. Yes, it took us 16 hours to get there, but it was well worth it!

     Did I mention that I drove the whole by myself? (That's why there are only 8 people in the car on a string..) Mr. Chickadee had business plans and did not come with us. Stopping often and letting the Chickadee and puppies run wild for 15-20 minutes at each stop was my sanity saver!!

Check out a few of the snapshots I took....

     There were a couple stops that I had planned on making, but ended up not stopping, so I think we will try on our way back home.

     I found some photos from several years ago when we did the car on a string trick, we had 5 Chickadee at the time and they loved it then too.

     I found the idea on pinterest, but for the life of me cannot find any links to the blog that I printed it from! I want to give credit where credit is due, so if you happen to know where it's from, please contact me!

Safe travels!!