In Transition

I can't get life to slow down!  Some days, I really really feel like it needs to, and others, I look back and am glad it all went by so quickly.  October was one of those - plenty of highlights, but also full of stress and hard work as we finished packing up our lives in North Carolina and moved across country.  Intense.  I think that was the hardest, most labor intensive move to date.  So so many details and To Dos this time around.

We packed up the entire house into two shipping containers and one Uhaul trailer, rented out the house, bid goodbye to good friends, and set out with the kids and the dog on the four day drive across country.  The drive went pretty smoothly - thank goodness! - and with all the fall leaves out, the drive scenery was gorgeous.

We arrived at my parents house on a Friday, stopping just long enough for a potty break then running to the school to get the kids enrolled before they closed the doors for the weekend.

It's been a little over a week since we arrived.  The kids have started school, we took over half of my dad's shop and set up the tools to start working on drying rack orders, helped with some pre-winter farm prep and "fixin' fence,"

celebrated Halloween by watching the elementary school's costume parade and Trick or Treating in our old neighborhood (fun fun!), experienced our first snow of the season (not the first storm here, but we weren't here for that)

 and have been steadily chipping away at the million-and-one things we need to do to get settled in.

We aren't done yet!  Not by a long shot.  The shipping containers will be dropped off today and I'm excited to get our stuff here and put away.  Most of it will need to go into storage.  Did I mention we are living in my parents' house while we build a house on our family land?  Yeah.  Lots of hard work ahead.  Thus the title of this post, "In Transition" - because life is just one giant Work In Progress right now.

Road Trippin' With a Pet

Two adults, two kids, and an enthusiastic golden retriever "puppy."  2200 miles, three days on the road.  Twice.  That pretty much sums up our road trip this summer from North Carolina to Utah and back again this summer.  Quite frankly there were times in the planning where I thought it was going to be torture.  In the end, it all went fairly smoothly and most of it was even enjoyable.

***I am continuing to slowly transfer posts from this blog to the new domain.  All of my great tips and tricks for travelling with a pet can be found HERE.

Road Trip Activity Folder for the Kids

'Tis the Season for Road Trips!  At least it was for our family.  Typically we plan one big vacation every year to go back to Utah and see our families.  This year we wanted to be there for a few weeks, and not wanting to leave the pup with anyone for that length of time, we decided to road trip it.  Oh yes we did! LOL  Three full days in the car (each way!) with two kids and a dog.  I'll blog about how we survived that one soon.  But for today, I just wanted to do a quick round-up of some of the activities I prepped to keep the kids busy while we were on the road.  Because, let's face it, while technology is awesome and we used it a lot, I didn't exactly want to see this every time I looked in the back seat.

 

 Yes, we did pack the mini DVD player (and a brand new movie), the tablet (with a couple new free apps) and the Ipods (again, with updated playlists).  We also uploaded an audio book the whole family could listen to (we highly recommend the Heros of Olympus series by Rick Riordan) and that served to keep us entertained for the majority of the time.  For variety's sake - and to get the kids to look out the window or carry on a conversation with us once in a while - I prepped quite a few activities ahead of time and put them in a couple of binders.

I found quite a few cute printables (like the Slug Bug one) here  and you can check my pinterest board for other ideas.  Each child got their own folder full of printables and I packed some dry erase markers so they could write directly on the page protectors then wipe them off to use again.  I also kept another folder in my bag full of more activities so I could change it up if I needed to when they got bored.  This included things like Lego instructions for the little guy (a couple sets in his binder and more ideas in mine) and origami folding instructions for Miss Kate.

Of course I also printed out maps for each day of our route.  One of the most exciting parts of the trip was anticipating when we would cross a state line and we would start counting down the miles 5-10 miles out from each one.  Kaitlyn even marked her map with the times we crossed each one so we could really see our progress.

Trip Journal Page found here.
Origami instructions found here.

Printable State Activity Pages found here.  I thought these were absolutely fantastic.  I kept them in my folder as well and handed them back to the kids as we entered each new state.
Of course, best laid plans and all - they did a few of them but often they were busy with other things and most of the state pages went into their folders unused.  No worries - we will be making the trip again in a couple of months (EEEK!  The move is coming so quickly!) so I kept it all together in their folders and my activity prep will already be done.

Another activity they enjoyed was making duct tape projects.  Again, I printed a few instructions out ahead of time and Kaitlyn was able to use the techniques and make up her own design for a wallet.
I also printed off some very detailed abstract coloring pages and packed a set of colored pencils for us to use (crayons and hot cars sounded like a bad idea) and found that even I liked to pull them out and color a bit while listening to the audio book.  (now that is something we should all blog tips about - forget about entertaining the kids, how do we adults pass the long hours in the car?!)

All in all, an hour or two on the computer and a small collection of office supplies and we were all set.  If only all of my projects were that easy...