Road Trip Essentials To Keep Kids Entertained... Plus the Mayhem On Our Trip To Southern Cali

We took our very first family road trip to southern California on Labor day weekend before our kids start school. We prepared (or at least, we thought we did) good for the trip but experienced some stuff we did not expect on our way down towards L.A --

The good
We have cut up cantaloupe, strawberries and grapes in Tupperware, and then along with Caprisun, we refrigerated them overnight. In the morning, we simply put all of them in a soft pack cooler.

I also brought along educational puzzles from Creative Whack in large Tupperware for easier toting. As usual, we purchased everything from Amazon - who can forego the 2 days shipping? We got the X-Ball, Y-Ball, and 2 Ball of Whacks. These puzzles kept my son entertained for hours.

There are plenty of road trip games to download and print. But I downloaded License Plate game from #BatchLabs. This kept me intrigued, entertained, competitive and at the same time, brought my tween and me together.

The Unexpected
I planned every stop which included stopping for Superchargers along the way. Yes, I have a fancy spreadsheet which I will share with you at the end of the road trip. I know I needed to be flexible because well it's a road trip after all and anything can go wrong. During my research phase, not one person talked or written about: No signal on HWY 9 or HWY 1!! Yes, you read that right! 

I don't have the signal on the phone (nor my husband's) so my spreadsheet in #dropbox is inaccessible. I can't access the internet. Furthermore, #Tesla cannot stream music and the GPS signal is kaput. We were in a lost world. We actually ended up stopping by a gas station to purchase a folded map just like when we were in the 90s - do you remember that pre-GPS era?

Anyways, GPS finally came on around the San Luis Obispo area and we were finally saved. I don't think my kids even realized anything out of ordinary happened. They didn't fall asleep once on the trip and enjoyed every bit of it on our way down here to Southern Cali. Stay tuned for more to come... 

Links:

• Creative Whack X-Ball: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B004VA10VS/ref=cm_sw_em_r_mt_dp_U_LIBADbNY4K3MS

• Creative Whack Roger von Oech's Ball of Whacks: Six-Color Edition: https://www.amazon.com/dp/0911121056/ref=cm_sw_r_tw_dp_U_x_uKBADb93NY0ZJ

• Creative Whack Roger Von Oech's Y-Ball https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0153RHWCS/ref=cm_sw_r_tw_dp_U_x_ELBADb13NAA4H

It's been a year since I converted

It has been a little bit over a year that I have left working a full-time job. Ok, maybe it's an understatement. It has been one year and 5 months since I have departed from the world of working 16+ hours a day with 24 hours on-call, and answering my phone while I was oversea on family vacations (Bali one year, Thailand the year before).

Did I miss work? Hell yeah! I missed the income and the social aspect of it. Otherwise, I am enjoying spending more time with my kids, making (err... attempting to make) home-cooked meals for the family. It's also nice to be in a home that's decently clean that I can invite folks over without needing to shove things into bedrooms and closing the doors. Yes, their laundry is done in-house and no more sending them off to laundromat.

I also found myself to be more involved in kids studies. I make sure they get their homework done on time and correctly the first time. I am also volunteering at school as a lunch lady once a week. I am now a part of PTC.

Also within this year, I learned to give proper self-care to me, myself and I. Yes - that's right! I have scheduled many facial and spa appointments; (heck, every 2 weeks, I got sometimes going), my nails and toes are on point. All my medical checkups are up to date and family haircut is done every 5-6 weeks.

Anyways, what I am saying is: stay-at-home mom doesn't mean you become a house mom, cleaner, a driver and a chores lady in yoga pants or pyjamas without a shower.  This mean, you have more time on your hands to do the things you love doing, and also for/with the ones you love. Go on! Be you! Enjoy yourself! Pick up a hobby! You deserve it for your sanity. Happy you makes a better wife/mom.