Roadtripping with babies

Part of growing up is changing from the child who is woken up from sleep at 5 am to be carried to the van for the long road-trip ahead to becoming the parent, who toils and slaves for days to create lists, pack, clean, organize, create new lists, strategically organize the van so everything fits like a piece of a puzzle and wake up early to get everyone on the road on time. 

The idea of being stuck in a minivan for 5 days was not exciting.  I tried to be as prepared as I could be to distract the kids and make the ride as comfortable as possible.  I'm not going to lie - I did consider packing them.  Is it any coicidence they fit so perfectly in the suitcases????

What?!?!?!  He had a pillow!!

Instead, I let them ride in their seats but mandated that they sleep...for the next 24 hours.

Okay - so that didn't work so well.  But, miracle of miracles,  somewhere in the State of Virginia, at a gas station off Interstate 81, Santa made a quick visit and dropped off Leo & Elena's stockings!!

Leo recieved 2 dinosaurs and a rhinocerous named Hippo. 

He was so in love with his Tigernose's (a.k.a. dinosaurs) that we heard a rousing rendition of a song he wrote somewhere inside the Tennessee border.  And it goes a little something like this:

Our favorite toy from the stocking was this flashing reindeer nose.

We even let our little reindeer out into the wild

With 5 days on the road, we had to get creative in order to survive.  Our time was occupied with the following:

Shooting truckers

Being bored

Destroying the car

Eating food

Lots and lots of food

Watching tons of DVDs

Playing with stickers

Reading books

And whenever the 2 of them started getting grouchy....

CHOCOLATE!!!!

I would also like to thank Chick-Fil-A for helping us keep our sanity.  We visited almost every Chick-Fil-A between here and Fredericksburg.  Each and every Chick-Fil-A had an aweome playplace for the kids to burn off some steam.  They also have good coffee :)