On the road again

Tuesday morning after the princesses awakened from their beauty slumber, Rich and I packed up the van and ate a quick breakfast. We were on the road back home to Massachusetts shortly before 9:30. The late start was somewhat intentional in that we wanted to avoid some of the morning rush hour traffic in that area. However, those of you who frequent Route 95 know that avoiding all rush hour traffic is impossible. We hit stop-and-go in Connecticut and Providence.

The girls were sad to leave. They really enjoyed the new environment and playing with their cousins.

I wish I could write a blog post on how to keep your kids happy and entertained during long car drives but I can't We totally wing it. We have a portable DVD player, which we set up between the two front seats. The girls, maybe because we don't allow them to watch a ton of television at home, will not watch DVD after DVD. They didn't even make it through Tangled, which is one of their favorites right now.

Rich purchased activity books specifically for this trip. The girls LOVED them. Unfortunately, they could not do any of the pages that required cutting and pasting but they each worked through all of the other pages in their books. The problem with the activity books is that an adult needs to read what to do on each page. I get car sick very easily and if I wasn't driving, I needed to sit in the middle row to attend to the needs of the little ones strapped into car seats. Twisting and turning and reading and doling out crayons did not help with the motion sickness at all.

But no one puked! That was such a relief. Car puking has been a frequent occurrence on all of our trips.

The one driving tip that I do have, especially if you have girls, is to invest in a travel potty. They are inexpensive and small and have come in handy on more than one occasion. Believe me, if you are in the middle of nowhere and your 3 year old says that she has to poop NOW, you'll be glad you have one.

Travel potties are a time saver as well. When we stopped at rest areas, I would run in to use the bathroom first while Rich unstrapped the girls so they could stretch their legs (in the van.) Allie and Em would use the travel potty. Rich would then run into the rest area while I cathed Anna in the van.

I'll end with the funniest moment from the ride home. We were quite literally five minutes from our house and Anna had been teasing Emily about something. Emily turned to look out the window and announced, "I am DONE with the talking."