Epic Road Trip - Day Three

It was a struggle to get up and moving this morning to make our way to Rapid City, South Dakota.  We managed to leave the hotel at 10 a.m. to start on our trek to Mount Rushmore.  When we first started planning this trip, we heard about a place called Carhenge that was an attraction along the way.  We planned for that to be our stop midway to Mount Rushmore.  Unfortunately, we had to make a pit stop on the side of the road for Cristina before we made it to Alliance.  Living on the east coast, it is a little hard to think that you could go over 100 miles and not pass any place with an available restroom.  I hope the horses didn't mind Cristina mooning them.

We finally made it to Carhenge sometime after 1 p.m. and the girls had fun walking around taking pictures.  For awhile, Charlotte had the camera and she was chasing after butterflies trying to get close enough for a picture.  After a bit, Cristina got the camera and decided that she needed to set up a photo shoot for us.  She directed Brian and I to kiss on the lips next to this pink car and she even gave Brian a purple flower to give me.  Emma got a picture of Cristina taking our picture.  (I really want to see the picture Cristina took, but first, I will have to find the camera!)

Around 4 p.m., we made it to Mount Rushmore.  The girls enjoyed earning their Junior Ranger badges by completing a workbook with facts about the monument.

I love this picture that Cristina took with my camera - it shows her view of Mount Rushmore.

We weren't able to stay there long because the girls were finally starting to feel the lack of sleep and long days.  So, we headed to our hotel in Rapid City, South Dakota.  We ended up getting a free upgrade to the Presidential Suite at the Howard Johnson, which is quite lovely. (As I type this, the girls are all snoozing in the king-sized bed, which means Brian and I are going to be on this pull out couch. Fail!)

On the way to the hotel, we saw a rainbow.  Just one of the amazing sites we have seen along the way.  The country is so different out here.  I love the expansive views and for some reason, I am really taken by all the giant stacks of hay everywhere!  Clearly, I don't get out much.

Epic Road Trip - Day Two

After enjoying an early breakfast at the hotel, we headed out to see some sites in St. Louis.  Our first stop was to the City Museum, which is an awesome place for kids and adults.  I had been several years ago and decided it would be worth the price to take the kids there.  We got there just as it was opening and for awhile, we pretty much had the place to ourselves.  The girls had a blast running around and climbing on all the different structures.  Emma and Charlotte especially loved the outside area, while Cristina and Ella spent a lot of time playing with clay in the free art area and hanging out in the toddler area.  We all enjoyed the skateless slide room.

Afterwards, we headed over to see the Arch up close and personal.  The girls were so tired out from the City Museum that they didn't have a lot of interest in the Arch.  They did enjoy the Museum of Western Expansion, although Brian and I would have both preferred if they would have taken it at a slower pace, so we could actually read the displays.  We spent a few minutes staring out at the Mississippi River before we loaded up the car to head to Kansas City for dinner.

On our way to Nebraska, we had the opportunity to stop and meet some friends in Kansas City.  Brian wanted to try Kansas City Barbecue, so we enjoyed a delicious dinner with fine company before embarking on the last bit of our journey to North Platte, Nebraska.  Brian and I were both exhausted on the ride and as the hours ticked by, we started playing the road games that I had planned for the kids.  They definitely worked to keep us awake and made the long ride bearable.  When we pulled into the hotel at 3:15 a.m., we were both ready to hit the hay.  

Epic Road Trip - Day One

We left in the wee hours of the morning in the hopes of getting to St. Louis in time to do something fun.  I had the car all packed on Wednesday night, so that all we had to do was throw the girls in the car in the morning and head out.  As you can see, I took advantage of every available space in the trunk!

Of course, the girls all woke up and thought it was a great time to start the day at 4 a.m.  They wanted to know when they were getting their first Road Trip Rewards.  I told them they would have to wait until at least 6:30 a.m. and that convinced most of them to go back to sleep.  Early on, we made a pit stop in Metropolis, Illinois.  The girls pulled their second road trip rodeo card and had fun following the instructions.

This rest stop was pretty cool because it had a playground.  We thought it would be a good idea for the girls to play for a few minutes before we headed on to St. Louis.

 Brian was bouncing Emma on the seesaw and she flew forward and slammed her head on the board in front of her.  For a minute, she lay their completely limp and I was convinced he had killed her or at the very least given her a concussion.  She ended up with a giant goose egg on her head, a scratched up nose, and a very apologetic daddy.

 We didn't make it to the giant Superman statue - we were all a bit preoccupied with Emma's head.  We did stop for a minute to get pictures as Superman.

 We finally made it to St. Louis about 1 p.m. and were able to go to the zoo.  A friend of a friend works there and got us passes to all the attractions. It was hot out and I'm pretty sure the girls' favorite attraction was this misting fan.

 The girls all perked up after getting some icecream and popsicles.

 Charlotte was really cute walking around the zoo taking pictures of everything.  The girls have taken a ton of pictures, but unfortunately, we have already misplaced the camera, so I have to find where it went missing in the car, so I can share some of those pictures.  We're missing all the pictures of the hippos at the zoo, where Emma was staring at awe at their sizes - amazed that they were almost as big as Brian.

 We spent the night at the Embassy Suites and you would have thought it was the Ritz-Carlton.  While I was checking in, the girls asked Brian how we could ever afford to stay somewhere like this!  They were excited to take advantage of the amenities.  We went down for the managers reception and in a span of seven minutes, Emma dropped and broke a plate, Charlotte ate six pounds of salami, and Ella fell out of her chair and started screaming her head off.  The day had been going fairly well up until then.  Charlotte cracked me up saying, "Flying plates, falling chairs, crying babies, too much salami...we're not getting invited back. Clumsy family. Next, we'll have drowning kids in the pool."  Then, we took the girls out to the pool where they had a blast. Emma taught Charlotte how to float and Ella actually wanted to get in the water.  We were about to head back upstairs when Cristina fell in the water and "almost drowned" - in her words.  Yep, we aren't getting invited back.

'Twas the Night Before Christmas

Tomorrow morning we head off on our epic road trip.  For some reason, Cristina is under the impression that tomorrow is Christmas.  Tonight after dinner, she asked me to tell Santa Claus to bring her a Minnie Mouse MP3 player with the number four on it.  She was so excited about Christmas that I couldn't bear to tell her she was going to be spending nine hours in the car tomorrow!  Hopefully, the Road Trip Rewards will make up for it not being Christmas.

In a way, I can understand why it might feel like it.  The girls are all excited and they had a hard time falling asleep because they can't wait to see what tomorrow brings.  I can't wait either!  I'm going to tell Santa to bring me a nice car pillow.

We're Going on a Road Trip, Part Two

I am so excited about all the things I have put together for the girls for the Road Trip Rewards.  I got a ton of great ideas from Pinterest and thought of some things on my own after scrounging around the house and office for anything random that could be turned into something to amuse a child.  I ended up with a ton of different ideas and really didn't spend a lot of money for any of them.  Below are pictures of each day's Road Trip Rewards and a little description of them.  For each day, I up-cycled Pringles cans and put inside a snack and small toy.  You can't see the snacks in the pictures - just whatever little toy is inside the can.

Travel Day One - Atlanta, GA to St. Louis, MO

1. Coloring Pages - I simply Googled "St. Louis Coloring Pages" and found some fun pages for the kids to color.
2. Coloring Book - I figure these will be good for more than one day.
3. Puzzles - I snapped a picture of the completed puzzle, printed it, and laminated it. Then, I put the pieces in ziploc bags with the picture.  These puzzles will fit on the cookie sheets that they got.  For the 2 year old, I have two four piece puzzles for her to tackle.  The older girls get 48 piece puzzles.
4. Letter Magnets - I was looking for some cheap letter magnets and didn't find any.  However, I found some 3/4 inch magnets with adhesive backs.  I used a square punch to punch different colored squares and then wrote the alphabet on them.  Each girl will get a bag with magnets for all the letters of the alphabet and enough extra letters to spell their whole name.  I figure the big girls can use these to spell words and the little girls can just make pictures out of the magnets.
5.  The Glitter Bag is one of my favorite Pinterest creations - a gallon ziploc bag, a container of Dollar Tree hair gel, and 1/2 cup of glitter - dump it all in the bag, squeeze out the air, and seal it.  I also sealed the top with hot glue as an extra precaution. These bags are a fun tactile toy for the girls.  They have already sneaked a few minutes with them when I was making them.
6.  Slinky - I bought mini Slinky toys and put them in the canister with their snack.
7.  Mystery Movie - I wrapped a total of seven movies for the trip in different colored tissue paper.  When they pull the movie stick, they get to pick the color movie they want- whoever picks the stick gets to open the movie.  I decided to do this so the girls wouldn't fight over the movie that was selected.
8. Peter Pan pages - I just randomly printed off some Peter Pan coloring pages with games on it for the girls to play.
9.  I Spy with My Little Eye (Car Bingo) - I found this printable online for a game of car bingo.  I laminated the sheets, so they could play the game more than once, which is why I was giving it to them on day one.  They can use the dry erase markers to mark off each square. I have a bag of wrapped candy and they get a piece when they get bingo.

Travel Day Two - St. Louis, MO to North Platte, NE 

1. Coloring Pages - This time, I printed pages for Nebraska as well as some other random pages. For the big girls, I printed some different logic games and word finds.
2. Mystery Movie
3. Hair Do Harriet - This is another thing I chose to give them early on because they could use it for several days.  I found these at Michael's for $1.
4. Marshmallows and Toothpicks - This is a snack and activity in one.  They can build something with the supplies or just eat the marshmallows.
5. Window Markers - I figure they can draw on the windows until Brian can't see to drive anymore.
6. Blank Papers and Sticker Dots - I have three different colored dots.  For a game, they will get a sheet of red, blue, and black stickers and a piece of blank paper.  They will guess which color car they think they will see the most of for the next fifteen minutes.  Then, every time they see a car that is red, black or blue, they put a sticker on the paper.  At the end, they can count up and see if their guess was right.
7. Alphabet Search - Again, this is a printable from Pinterest and I laminated the sheet so they could play this game more than once.  Whenever they see the letter on a sign, they cross it off their sheet.  Whoever spies all the letters first wins - of course, everyone will be a winner.
8. Blank Paper - Each day they will get fresh paper for their binder.
9. I'm Going on a Picnic Game - This is the game where you say, "I'm going on a picnic and I am bringing apples...", then the next person repeats what the previous person says and you keep adding on as long as you can until someone forgets one of the items.
10.  Unfortunately, Fortunately Game - I read this somewhere online and thought it was a cute game especially for my imaginative little girls.  Basically, you take turns telling little stories like, "Unfortunately, we are going on a really long road trip, but fortunately my mom loves Pinterest and has lots of great activities planned for us and it is  going to be GREAT!"

Travel Day Three - North Platte, NE to Keystone, SD

1. Mount Rushmore Coloring Pages
2. Mystery Movie
3. Sign Maze - I just liked the road sign theme.
4. Bubbles - I got tiny bottles for them to blow in the car.  I figure this will be especially fun for the two year old.
5. Street Sign Tic Tac Toe - I printed this out from Pinterest as well and laminated it so they could play over and over again.  I also hole punched all these games, so they can stick them in their binders.

Travel Day Four - Keystone, SD to De Smet, SD

1. Little House on the Prairie Coloring Pages
2. More Blank Paper
3. Window Markers - Again!
4. Mystery Movie
5. Publix Dinner Conversation Cards - I got these when I ran the Publix Half-Marathon and they have all kinds of family oriented questions.  The girls love this kind of thing.
6. Bendeez - This is a giveaway item that we had in the office.  They are 18 inch long sticks that bend into whatever shape you want.

Travel Day Five - De Smet, SD to Tulsa, OK

1. Mystery Movies (2) - This is our longest day and we have no planned stops to amuse the kids, so I need lots of entertainment for the ride.
2. Color Game - I basically just punched out circles of all the colors of the rainbow and glued them to a strip of a foam sheet.  Then, I found a bag of little colored clothespins at Michael's with all the same colors.  I figure we can play a game where they have to look for something outside with one of the colors.  The first one to find all six colors wins and we start over.  For the little ones, they can just practice matching the clothespin to the colored circles.
3. Pipe cleaners - They each get a handful to play with and make whatever their little minds can create.
4. Dry Erase Books and a Word Find - I bought Ella a little dry erase board, Cristina a dry erase book with places to trace the alphabet, Charlotte a dry erase math book, and Emma  a word find book.
5. Eraser Puzzles - These are inside the canister with the daily snack.
6. Travel Books from the Chick-fil-A kids meal and a picture book for Ella
7. Magnetic Scene Books for the big girls and a Busy Quiet Time book that I made myself for Ella
8. Road Trip Scavenger Hunt Sheet
9. Coloring Pages with Oklahoma
10. Blank Paper
11. Alphabet Word Game for the big girls and Laminated Name Sheets for the little girls to practice writing their names

Travel Day Six - Tulsa, OK to Mansfield, MO to Atlanta, GA

For the final leg, I plan to recycle some of the games from early in the trip.  We will also be driving a good deal at night, so I am not sure how much we will actually use.
1. Coloring Pages - I printed some of their favorite characters from pbskids.org and nickelodeon
2. Wooden Puzzle for Ella, Minnie Mouse book for Cristina, Addition Practice sheets for Charlotte, and a Crayola activity for Emma
3. Tell Tale game from Chick-fil-A kids meal
4. Sticker Books
5. Mystery Movie
6. Window Paints
7. Publix Dinner Questions
8. Car Color Competition Game
9. I-Spy with My Little Eye Car Bingo
10. Alphabet Game - We will pick a theme and they will have to name something from that theme using every letter of the alphabet. We might have to get creative with x and z.
11. I'm Going on a Picnic Game
12. I-Spy - just the regular version

Whew!  That was a lot of work.  I hope it all pays off.

We're Going on a Road Trip - Part One

Back in January, we started reading the Little House on the Prairie books to the girls at bedtime.  They fell in love with the stories and were especially captivated when Brian brought them home the original television series with Michael Landon and Melissa Gilbert.  In April, Brian discovered that you could actually visit the homestead of the Ingalls family in De Smet, South Dakota and camp overnight in covered wagons.  On a whim, we decided it would be a fun trip to take the girls out to see some of the places where the stories actually took place.  So, after a bit of research, we designed what we lovingly refer to as our "Epic Road Trip."  In just a few days, we will be heading off to explore American history on a family road trip.

Thanks to Google, we have discovered that we will be driving for 53 hours over the course of 11 days.  Add in 1,734 additional hours for bathroom breaks and pretend bathroom breaks and that is a lot of hours on the road with four children.  I decided I would have to do some serious planning to keep the girls entertained in the car and ensure that Brian and I arrived at our destination with our sanity.  Thanks to Pinterest and my own creative genius, I have devised a pretty solid plan for keeping the girls entertained during the car ride.  I'll share some general ideas in this post and the specific daily drive plans in the next post.

Each girl will get her very own travel binder for the trip. Inside each binder I put a zipper pouch with markers, dry erase markers, a small eraser, and a pen.  I also recycled some drink mix containers to hold crayons for the girls. Each binder will come with a cover page with a map of the United States (printable from Pinterest - all these links are on my board), a map of the United States with the states labeled, and a print out of the License Plate Game, and some blank paper for coloring, doodling, or whatever.

 

Each girl will also be getting a cookie sheet that I have decorated with their name.  I only decorated them, so they can't argue over which one is theirs when the inevitably get mixed up in the car.  I got this idea from Pinterest - apparently there are hundreds of things that the girls can do with cookie sheets in the car.  My main objective is something for them to press on and a place to keep whatever I am giving them to entertain themselves from rolling onto the car floor.

I decided early on that we wouldn't be stopping for lunch or dinner while we were on the road.  I plan to use stops as an opportunity for the kids to run around and burn off some energy.  I'm pretty sure that after hours in the car the last thing they would want to do is sit quietly in a restaurant.  So, we are packing road trip food and I have designed these little cards as a way to prompt them to get moving at rest stops.  I'm calling these the Rest Stop Rodeo cards - no real reason for the rodeo, I just like the way it sounds.  I saw a post on Pinterest where someone did something like a scavenger hunt as a literacy exercise, but thought this might be a little easier for our girls.  So, at each stop, they will draw a card and the person who draws the card will be the leader and instruct the others on what to do.  There are five easy tasks for each stop.

 I am not ashamed to admit that I plan to use bribery on this trip to keep the girls in check.  I found a printable for Car Bucks on Pinterest, but I prefer to call it Car Cash -I'm all about alliteration.  The girls can earn bucks for good behavior (nap time=Car Cash) and trade them in for 30 minutes on the iPad or exchange them for real dollars to buy souvenirs.  I'm really hoping that this helps to monitor iPad usage and keep them from fighting over it. This could be wishful thinking.  I even debated leaving the iPad at home, but it is such a good distraction, I'm going to try this method and see how it works.

 For each day that we are driving, I have a little ziploc bag with popsicles sticks that the girls will get to pull from for Road Trip Rewards.  For each travel day, I have one reward for each hour that we are on the road.  I'm not sure if we will pull these on the hour or just as needed.  For more on the rewards, see Post #2.

 For each day of our trip, I have created Travel Logs for the girls.  Emma and Charlotte have logs with a few places for them to write about the trip. Cristina and Ella have places to draw pictures.  As time allows, I'll try to ask them about their favorite part of the day and write down their responses.

So, this is my general plan to maintain sanity.  I'll let you know in a few weeks if it worked!

Ain't Nobody Got Time for That

Brian and I have a tradition of sitting down on New Year's Eve and writing out lists of goals for the new year.  It has to be one of my all time favorite things to do. I love to set goals.  One of my goals for the year was to try one idea from Pinterest each week.  I figured if I'm going to spend all the time pinning things, then I should actually try to take the time to follow up on all the amazing ideas I see.  This has led to a variety of new recipes, craft projects, random cleaning experiments, and a few tough treadmill workouts.

Recently, I came across a recipe on Pinterest called "Greek Baked Shrimp with Feta and Garlic."  Instantly, I remembered this delicious Greek Shrimp Pasta that I used to order at my favorite little restaurant, Kona, from my graduate school days.  I pinned the recipe to take a look at later.  When I did, I fond that it called for a splash of some random ingredient called ouzo (or mastic liqueur).  I'm not really sure what ouzo is and, in the words of my favorite Internet sensation, Sweet Brown, "ain't nobody got time for that."  I hate to have to buy something that I will only need a "splash"of, so I decided to take a stab at recreating the recipe myself based on my memory of it.  The result was AMAZING.  I was transported back twelve years to the sleepy, little town of Oxford.

It really wouldn't be fair to keep this all to myself, so here is the recipe!  I do have to say that I am a bit of an intuitive cook and I don't really measure anything, but these are pretty good guesses.  The picture may not be that appetizing because we'd already helped ourselves before I thought about capturing this dish!  Brian and I loved it and the girls liked it as well.  Charlotte, who spoiled her lunch by eating half a bag of cheese balls that she bought at the Dollar Tree with her allowance, was really annoyed with the rest of us for going on and on about this dish that she was too sick to eat!

Kristina's Greek Shrimp Pasta

Ingredients
1 pound of shrimp, peeled and rinsed
3 garlic cloves, minced
1/8 cup of onion, diced
1/2 teaspoon of dried oregano
salt and pepper to taste
2-3 tablespoons of olive oil
1/2 cup feta cheese
1 1/2 cups of grape tomatoes
1 pound of linguine noodles

The topping doesn't take long, so when you are putting the pasta in to boil, start the rest!

Saute the onion and garlic in a skillet in about 1-2 tablespoons of olive oil until the onions are beginning to get translucent. Then, toss the tomatoes into the pan.  After a few minutes, you'll notice the tomatoes beginning to turn a different color.  When this happens, use a fork to poke holes in some of the tomatoes to release the juices.  Then, toss in the shrimp and cook until it is pink.  Sprinkle on the oregano, salt, and pepper and stir a good bit to keep stuff from sticking to the pan.    

About this time, your pasta should be finished.  Drain the pasta and reserve just a tad bit of water - maybe 1/8 cup.  Then, dump the pasta in the skillet with the shrimp and tomato mixture.  Drizzle about 1 tablespoon of olive oil on the hot pasta and toss it all together to coat and mix up the ingredients.  Top with 1/2 cup of feta cheese (more if you like) and serve!