Heather's Top 5 Tips for Traveling with Kids

On our summer vacation this year we drove from Alabama to Colorado and back with a baby and a 3 year old, and everyone stayed relatively happy, so I think that makes me qualified to list my top tips for traveling with children!

1. Now matter how many times you have said "no" break down and buy the car DVD player before a long trip. It is absolutely a lifesaver! Although you may never want to see Peter Pan ever again by the time you come home, the kids will stay entertained for hours with this! We stored our DVDs in a sun visor CD holder and that worked wonderfully, HOWEVER, make sure it is positioned in such a way that if you take a corner too fast and the DVDs fly out of the holder they will land in the car and not fly out the open window! (This really happened!)

2. Bring a Sherpa. What I mean is, bring an extra adult to carry the extra weight when it comes to the kids. Our sister in law April came with us and she was wonderfully helpful! She not only carried the extra weight while we hiked, she was there to lend a helping hand with anything we needed. One of the reasons that we were able to travel so far each day is that we were able to rotate having one person drive, one person watch the kids and one person sleep.

3. Toys. Lots and lots of toys! Seriously, we bought a small clear Rubbermaid bin and we filled it with toys and kept it in the floor of the car. Then we would rotate the toys often so the kids wouldn't get too bored.

4. Magna Doodle. This provided hours and hours of entertainment for both the 3 year old and the adults. We bought this for the trip and it was worth every penny. She still uses it daily.

5. Use the internet. I spent the better part of one pre-trip day finding fun car activities online and printing them out. www.nickjr.com was a wonderful resource for this. I packed a bag full of activities she had never seen before, some crayons, and some stickers and this also provided hours of fun.
If you have any more fool proof car entertainment tips, please share them with me!

Colorado vacation with the kids - are we NUTS?

This summer we decided to undertake quite a feat and take our first vacation in a really long time. Of course cruises and other conventional vacations that require leaving our children at home are not our style, so instead we embarked on an epic adventure across the country with our two young children and our sister-in-law April in tow. We started our trip late one evening in Birmingham, Alabama and we drove with few stops for almost 24 hours before stopping the next night in Denver, Colorado. I have to admit, we were all completely exhausted, but we knew we had made it a lot farther than we had expected to on the first day and we were so proud of how good the children were the whole time in the car. By the time we reached Denver we all stumbled into the first hotel room we could find and were happy to actually sleep in beds! The next morning we loaded into the car and had a leisurely drive through the mountains to our ultimate destination of Leadville, Colorado. Leadville is the highest incorporated town in the country and truly one of the most breathtaking places I have ever been. We set up camp (yes, of course we tent camped all week!) and headed into town just in time to catch the end of the burrow races and see a little bit of Leadville.

One thing that we were really struck by was how hard it was to breathe at that altitude! Even April who runs marathons was getting winded there (I have to admit that this made me feel much better about myself.)

We spent the whole week just playing outdoors and generally having a great time. I absolutely fell in love with Leadville and I am sure we will go back there at some point in the future. It has to be one of the most beautiful places in the world.

On our way back to Alabama we stopped at Sand Dunes National Park and had some fun playing in the sand and getting dirty. The rest of the trip home was pretty awful since we were missing the excitement that kept us going on the way out. We pushed on and made it home in one day. Again, the kids were wonderful and such little troupers. In fact, I can honestly say that I complained more than they did on the way home!