Headed West

On Sunday July 14th me and the kids got up early and started  our drive to Utah.  I spent about two weeks preparing activities and games for the kids to do in the car.  I made Leila and Greydon travel binders.  Inside the binders were maps, activity sheets, dot-to-dots, hidden pictures, math activities and a bunch of other things I printed from the web.  I put everything in page protectors and gave them dry erase markers and crayons.  I had a bag for each of them that includes crayons, coloring books, paper, a clip board, books, and a few toys.  I put together a  bucket full of toys for Asher.  I also had a bag of surprises for the kids that I planned on giving them at different points in the trip.  Most things were from the dollar store, I had things like slinkies, little crafts, and little figurines.  I also had a couple big things like new games, new books and new sticker books.  

We had a huge variety of snacks for the drive.   I packed a little box of snacks for each of the kids.  That way they could get at the snack when they wanted them without me constantly having to hand them out.  

We hit the road at 5 AM, I woke the kids up, took them to the bathroom and put them in the car.  We had donuts in the car for breakfast and changed into clothes at one of the stops.  We were traveling at the same time as the Spjut family, she was headed to Utah with her four kids.  It was nice having friends out on the road at the same time as us!  We stopped at Subway for lunch and ate with our friends.  

Madi and Leila

We had happy faces the entire drive there.  Suckers and ring pops definitely helped.  

We had a great drive, the kids stayed busy with their activities, we only watched a couple of movies and they each took a nap or two.  I made clips with Leila and Greydon's initials on them, they lost a clip if they were whining, complaining, bugging a sibling or fighting.  If they got to a stop and still had a clip then they could pick a treat.  It worked great, we didn't have a single fight the entire drive and no major melt downs.  

About three hours before reaching Utah my parents met us in Wyoming.  My mom got in my car to help with the kids.  We stopped at Little America in Wyoming for dinner and ice cream cones.  We ended up stopping for about and hour, although it slowed us down it was a nice break.  

We reached Utah at about 10 PM that night.  It was so nice to finally be there and be out of the car.