On the Road

So a series of posts is in order to fully document the trip to Florida. Our goal for the vacation was a week in Orlando visiting Sea World and little things like Gator World, the zoo, the science museum, mini golf, etc. We also planned to spend one day in Tampa at Busch Gardens. This was our first big trip with the kids, and we wanted to have lots of fun and be able to take lots of breaks. We invited my brother to come along since he had never been to Orlando and so we could have extra sets of eyes and hands to help with the kids. So we loaded the car and left last Saturday morning, planning to travel as far as Brunswick, GA and spend the night there before continuing on to Orlando. I was SO nervous about the car trip with 3 preschoolers. I had a few ideas to help make the trip easier, and they actually worked! First, I created a paper road and velcroed it to the ceiling of the van. G labeled towns along the way, and we marked off milestones with a little toy car also velcroed to the ceiling. K especially liked seeing our progress, and it really cut down on the chorus of "are we there yet?" coming from the back seat. Even I really liked being able to see where we were on the route.

I also made lots of "surprise bags" to hand out during the trip. I filled them with little toys or activities that they had not seen before, and they were a hit! I only had to pass them out every couple hours and the kids spent lots of time coloring, lacing, stickering, playing Simon, etc. Even EB liked coloring on a little lap board. Of course, we had the DVD player, but I believe it got surprisingly little use. We did get smart and finally remove the speakers so that the only way they could hear it was with the headphones. That was WONDERFUL!

G mapped out where all the Cracker Barrels were along the way so we would never be far from a bathroom break. The weird thing was, nobody needed to stop! We also found a park along the route where we planned to stop for a picnic lunch and let the kids run around. It was a great diversion for an hour or so. Great wooded playground with swings, a tire swing, and jungle gym, so we all had plenty of opportunity to stretch our legs.

Well, it turned out that we were making AWESOME time, so by the time we got to Brunswick, GA, it was dinner time and we were envisioning an evening walking around the local mall or staring at each other in the Red Roof Inn. So a couple quick phone calls later and were back on the road, heading to Orlando a night early! Yay! We should have known this would happen when we saw this cloud formation from the car window:
By the time I dug out the camera, the shape had thinned out a bit, but it definitely looked like Florida in the sky - everyone in the car noticed it! So Florida, here we come!