Road Tripping with Toddlers

On Sunday we returned from our family vacation to Montana.  We had a great time.  It was our first long road trip with the kids and I might have gotten a little frantic preparing.  Might have.

I was worried about the kids having to be in the car for a 12 hour road trip to Glacier National Park.  That was our original plan.  Our trip, however, was delayed after my husband's great-uncle passed away.  We stayed in town for the funeral and skipped Glacier.  The rest of the trip was spent in Bozeman and Missoula. So the driving part was a little shorter than expected.

In any event, I spent a lot of time preparing and I do believe that my efforts payed off.  I reviewed a few blog posts for ideas.  Like this one and this one.  Here's what worked:

1.  How to avoid the "Are we there yet?" syndrome.

Toddlers have no concept of time.  Maybe you've noticed.  Saying that we are three hours away or even a half hour means nothing.  So I made this felt road and little stuffed van.  We advanced the car according to travel time.  When we were half way there the car was half way down the road.  I just used pins to tack the road and the car to the ceiling above the sun visors.  Kimball loved it.  He might not let me take it down.  Of course instead of asking "Are we there yet?" he just kept telling me to "Move the van" as if that would get us to our destination faster.

2.  Presents and baskets.

I took the advice of one blogger and bought dollar store presents for the kids and wrapped them.  (Of course if I had called my sister she would have given me the same idea because she's smart like that.)  I used the presents as incentives for good behavior and to keep the kids occupied so Bryce and I could listen to our book on tape.

That same blogger also suggested using baskets to keep things handy.  I bought three baskets at the dollar store.  Two had treats and one held the presents.  The baskets may actually become a permanent fixture in my van because they were great at keeping things tidy and accessible.

3.  Be willing to make unplanned stops.

This piece of advice is my own.  My husband and I like checking out stuff we happen to see as we are driving.  It makes for a bit of an adventure.  On our way up, we stopped at Bear World outside Rigby, Idaho.  It wasn't on the itinerary, but it was one of the funnest things we did.  They had kiddie rides, a petting zoo and, of course, a drive though a bear park.  I totally recommend it!

Any other useful ideas for road trips?

Make Your Own Maternity Clothes

I don't (or didn't) have nearly enough maternity clothes.  After seeing this post on making your own clothes I decided to give it a try.  I also used this post as a reference.

So far I have done two capris, a pair of jeans and a skirt.  The skirt is by far my favorite and the only one I took pictures of.  The process is pretty easy.

1.  Cut off the waist band.  I just left the zipper in place, but I took the zippers off on some of the pants.

2.  Use a tight shirt and cut off enough  for a band.  This band is huge but I like to double it over.  Half of the shirt would have been plenty.

3.  Pin the shirt and the skirt/pants together and sew.

It's that simple.  Sorry I don't have a picture of the finished product, but I don't like taking pictures of my lumpy belly.  Be assured it looks great.

Now a few thoughts on doing this for pants.  Don't use jeans that are stretchy or tight.  Why?  Because they don't stay up.  It's annoying.  The jeans I made are cute but will have to go to my skinnier sister.  Also, I used some old tanks for the jeans that were not very study and they just ripped apart.  I am trying to add an elastic waist band to one pair to keep them up.  We'll see how that goes.

In any event, the skirt was a raving success.  And my nice hubby gave me a gift card to a maternity store for mother's day.  Between the few things I've made, my new stuff and the generosity of my sister loaning me hers, I think I will make it through the summer without looking like the frumpy mom I am.

Summer Hair Cuts

Last week I gave the boys summer hair cuts.  After a bath to wash away all the hair they had popsicles on the steps outside.  Love those two monkeys!

Egg Carton Spiders

Lately my two boys have been into spiders and bugs.  It might be the enjoyable fact that we have 50 gajillion boxelder bugs outside our front steps which they love to smoosh.  I have thought about teaching them to have a greater respect for God's creatures but I hate boxelder bugs.  

In any event, I thought they might have fun making their own spiders so I saved up some egg cartons and grabbed some pipe cleaners at the dollar store.  Hooray for the dollar store!  I used eyes that are craft eyes for stuffed animals because I had them on hand but you could use googly eyes, which are also available at the dollar store.  

We made baby ones and Daddy ones.  We also made Mommy ones but I took the pictures before that happened.

The kids loved it!

6 Minute Microwave Caramels: Super Easy!

My internet travels recently led me to a recipe for caramels that you can make in 6 minutes in the microwave--no candy thermometer needed.  (You can retrace my steps by going here and here.)

I whipped these puppies up today and they were WAY TOO EASY.  These could easily be the fastest way to satisfy a candy craving ever.  I almost put melted chocolate on top, but I refrained.

All you need to do is mix the following in a microwave safe bowl.  I suggest one with a handle so you don't burn yourself when you have to pull them out.

5 T. butter
1/2 c. corn syrup
1/2 c. white sugar
1/2 c. brown sugar (or 1/2 c. white sugar + 1/2 T. molasses)
6 T. sweetened condensed milk.

Microwave for 6 minutes, stirring every two.  Pour into a greased 8x8 pan and cool in the fridge.

Eat.  Hord.  Let your kids poke them with a spoon (Don't ask).   I suppose you could cut them up and wrap them in wax paper, but that seems like a lot of effort to me.

More Fun with Baking Soda

So, here is another pin I made an effort to replicate recently.  (Ok, not really recently, this was back in April.  I'm just a little behind on my posting.)

You would think that we have had enough of baking soda and vinegar based on the volcanoes and our cabbage experiment.  Fortunately, toddlers never find the chemical reaction dull.

Source: Uploaded by user via Katherine on Pinterest

I'd say it was pretty successful.  And easy, which is my standard for any entertainment.

The Blankie Jar

From the time Kimball was 6 months old (or so) he has had a blanket named Blue.  It was a small piece of blue fleece with knotted tassels around the edges.  It became pretty ratty and occasionally lost one of the tassels, which was cause for extreme trauma.  On these occasions I would perform the necessary repair surgery to reattach the missing tassel.

Sadly, Blue was lost this last December when we took the boys on a trip to ride TRAX.  I suppose it was inevitable.  Although we had been successful on various recovery missions in the past--no such luck this time.

I thought it would be more tragic than it was for Kimball to lose his Blue.  But he handled it well enough.  He refused all attempts at making replacement, and even the backup Blue we had on hand for just such an occasion was insufficient in his toddler eyes.  I thought the days of the blankie had passed.  I was wrong.

A few months later Kimball adopted a new blanket.  I suppose such bonds take time and cannot be artificially created.  This new blanket is two pieces of yellow flannel that is tied together in tassels around the edges.  

This is the only photo I could find of the new blanket.

One night, soon after the adoption of the new blankie, Kimball began to cry in bed.  This was not a normal cry of I'm bored and don't want to go to bed.  He sounded genuinely upset.  Bryce rushed to his aid and I heard a cute conversation wherein Kimball sniffled that a piece had come off of his new blankie.  Bryce resolved this issue like any good Dad and told him that Mom would fix it in the morning.  They put the piece in a "special" place on the book shelf.

In the morning I was up before Bryce and Kimball bounded upstairs to tell me that his blankie needed to be fixed.  I got out my suturing kit (i.e. needle and thread) and we went to retrieve the missing piece.  We hunted and hunted but I couldn't find a thing.  I told Kimball that he would need to wait until Dad got up because I didn't know where the piece was.

Soon enough Bryce was up and brought me the missing piece of Kimball's precious blanket.  It was a thread!  That's right a measly piece of thread.  You know how flannel frays a bit with wash?  Well, Kimball's blanket is flannel and quiet frayed where the pieces have been tied together.  One of the threads had come off and he wanted me to sew it back on.  

What did I do?  I sewed it back on.

The problem?  This new flannel blanket is frayed everywhere!  Do you know how often one of those silly threads comes off?  Almost daily.  And you have another thing coming if you think that I will be sewing threads back onto fraying flannel for the next  . . . whenever! 

That's when I came up with the blankie jar.

It's an old pimento jar that Kimball gets to collect pieces of his blankie (i.e. threads) in.  He often finds random threads and declares them "pieces of my blankie".  What do I care.  At least I don't have to sew them back on.

Not 2 Minutes After I Cleaned the Floor . . .

That's shredded cheese and chocolate milk in case you were wondering.  He looks so pleased with himself.

I Won! I Won! I Won!

There are a lot of great giveaways on the internet.  I don't always enter because I never win.  But perhaps my luck has changed because I recently won a prize from my friend Stephanie Peterson's Website, cheftessbakeresse.blogspot.com.  Woot!

I won the following spice mixes that she has designed herself and a fun apron.  I am looking forward to trying the spices.  But that would, of course, require me to start cooking again.  I'm sure it will happen some day.  The kids can't live on chicken nuggets, cheese, apples and chocolate milk forever.  Or can they?

The Real Reason It All Fell Apart

You may have noticed that my Self Reliance Experiment has dropped off the face of the earth.  Well, there is a reason.  We're expecting!!  And when you have morning sickness all day long, food (storage) is the last thing you want to be thinking about.  Hopefully it won't be too long before food starts sounding appetizing again.  My poor family; they went from Mom cooking food storage to not cooking at all.  Yikes!