Friday 13: 13 Games for Travel Time

Wen you make the decision to get into an enclosed vehicle for a very long time with young people you better have some ammunition. Not that kind of ammunition, weirdos. I’m talking ideas on how to pass the time. You know, to minimize the “are we there yet” sickness that seems to overtake kids as soon as they realize they’ll be confined for more than an hour.

 

So, in honor of our 10+ hour road trip I’ve come up with my next installment of the Friday 13:

13 Games for Travel Time

  1. The Letter Game. Remember! You have to find the letters in order, outside of the vehicle.
  2. The Number Game. Same as the number game but without the limit of there only being 26 letters. If you can count high then you can keep playing the game.
  3. The Quiet Game. My personal favorite since my favorite six year old doesn’t have an off button when it comes to talking.
  4. Bingo You have to prepare for this one. Create (or buy) bingo cards with things you might see on the trip.
  5. License Plate Game Whoever can spot license plates from the most states wins.
  6. I Spy This may a little hard to play since you’re driving and not much of the scenery will stay the same…other than the inside of the vehicle. But you can spy things inside the truck. This is also great to do if you’re stopped at a pit stop, gas station, etc.
  7. Name That TuneUse your kids’ CDs to actually give them a shot at winning.
  8. Purchased Travel Games There are tons of tiny travel games with magnetic pieces.
  9. If You… Ask deep questions and see what you learn about your kids. “If you were an animal what would you be?” “If you could meet someone who would it be?”
  10. Punch BugRemember! When you see a Volkswagen Beetle you get to punch someone in the arm?!?! Whoever spots the most wins. May not be fun to play with teenage boys.
  11. Padiddle A great nighttime game. Whoever spots the most cars with one burned out headlight wins.
  12. Scavenger Hunt Create a list of specific things the kids must find/spot.
  13. Story Time Take turns telling a story with each person building on the plot.

Extra: Here’s my favorite: Clean Up The Truck Now That We’ve Spent 10 Hours In It And You’ve Treated It Like a Trash Can That’s Been Hit By A Tornado. No need to explain the rules on this one, right?

 

What are some travel games your family likes to play?

Fasting

They say that fasting is healthy for you. It forces you to focus on what’s really important and re-prioritize things. What do they know?

 

I did it. I fasted from the computer for a whole day. A WHOLE DAY. Well, 14 hours, which is a whole day in my book. It wasn’t fun, but it wasn’t as hard as I thought it was going to be. Du made an agreement with me: if I could abstain from computer usage until 8pm then he would rub my back for a whole 30 minutes. Just to see if I could do it. Chills for 30 minutes? A challenge? I’m in.

 

Hello my lonely.

On a normal day, throughout the day I will check email, read posts that come in (remember, 75+ subscriptions…I cannot afford to wait to see them in a reader at the end of the day. I’m doing that now and it’s taking for freakin ever), make comments sometimes on said posts, learn CSS, play around with CSS, twit, window shop, actually do some work. It all takes time people. And although I was very productive today, my evening feels frantic and I’m lightheaded. I’ve got so much electronica to catch up on. I had over 130 emails waiting on me (Note to self: don’t subscribe to Lula‘s comment feed when you’re not going to check your email that day. Girl gets some comments.)

 

I shall now brag about how much I actually did get done today. I mowed the lawn; mowed the neighbor’s front yard; cleaned out the truck (two girls who self feed…gross); called utility companies to notify them of our pending move; did laundry; posted a letter or two; ran to WalMart, the post office and the car wash; fed chillins, played with chillins; babysat one of Reagan’s friends; altered a garment I didn’t quite like the look of; vacuumed; made dinner; what else. Oh, about every 15 minutes my mind would think, “ok, time to check in.” Then I would have to remind myself, I’m in it to win it.

 

So the dilemma is: I enjoyed being productive all day. But is it really efficient for me to save all my computer work till the end of the day? I know the answer people, I’m just asking rhetorically. I’ve got to find some good method of checking in and staying on top of it all, while still being as productive as I was today. This is going to force me to fire up that side of my brain that is all organizational and OCD and AR, that used to be oh so ever present up until the birth of number two. This is a good thing since we’re moving in some 20 odd days and I haven’t done a darn thing about it…except call the utility companies.

 

But for now, let’s all clap and cheer and slap me on the back (no, don’t do that, I hate that) and tell me how great I did today. It was all for a higher purpose.

Explaining Myself

Do you ever have those times when you feel like you have to explain yourself? And the more you explain the weirder you sound? Oh, yes you do. I had two such experiences today.

 

Experience #1:
Today is grocery day.  I normally fill our cart with healthy foods. I know you wouldn’t believe it from what you read on this blog, but honestly most items that go into our cart are fresh, non-boxed and not processed. Honestly. So, today, here is what I put in my cart, in order of how the cashier scanned it:

  • Spring water (see!)
  • Cookie Crisp cereal
  • Honey Nut Cheerios cereal
  • Doritos
  • Better Cheddar Crackers
  • Oreos
  • Chips Ahoy (the low fat kind)
  • Teddy Grahams
  • Pop Tarts
  • Chocolate chips – peanut butter swirls
  • Chocolate chips – caramel swirls
  • Can of mixed nuts
  • Flour
  • Beef Jerky
  • Peanut M&Ms
  • Plain M&Ms
  • Brown Sugar
  • Smart Balance Peanut Butter x2
  • Banana something pudding cups
  • Crisco
  • Milk (skim)
  • Butter
  • Fudge Pops

I’m always self-conscious about what I put up on the conveyor belt. I assume the cashier is rating each customer as she scans our items: Pig. Health Nut. Stingy. Vegetarian. Meat Lover. OMG, you’re buying those!?! What do you make with that?  You’ve already opened the box…couldn’t you at least wait until you’re in your car? Pig.

Then comes my order above. I can hear her thinking: Diabetes waiting to happen. So I immediately speak up to shut her mind up. “I, uhh, don’t usually buy all this stuff. We’re, uh, going on vacation soon. Most of this is our, um, travel food…” I trail off as she saves me from myself, “Oh, really? I wasn’t even paying attention.” “Oh, good.” is what I say. “Whatever, yeah right.” Is what I’m thinking.

If I just wouldn’t have said anything I wouldn’t feel like a weirdo for buying mostly junk food on my once weekly trip to the store. But after you speak up and make the excuse, then the weirdness is out there and the veracity of your claims are automatically doubted.

So I tuck my tail between my legs and exit the store. Now, about what and how we eat when we’re traveling–lay off, mk? When you’re cooped up in a car the boxed, premade, processed stuff is the best. She’s right though, we’re all likely to go into sugar shock while ddddrrrrriiiiivvvvviiiiinnnnngggg across Kansas.

 

Experience #2:

Well, this was really an almost experience. I learned from my foot in mouth episode twenty minutes earlier.

We round the curve in the road nearing our house to see a lawn service trailer by our yard and two or three people milling about our yard. Uhh, I mowed last week, does the POA take matters into their own hands when they feel we’re not doing a good enough job? The lady explains to me the homeowners (we’re renting) sent her out there to take care of the weeds. My first reaction was to be defensive. There aren’t that many weeds in the shrubbery. Granted the ground cover isn’t free and clear of its share of grass growing throughout it…but we’re getting to that soon. After the vacay. Then I remembered that our front lawn is basically a good 50/50 mix of grass and weeds. And it’s splotchy. I’m never in the front yard because of that reason, thus I forget what it looks like. The claws retract.

THEN, I remember that my name is still mowed into the back yard. Remember that? Yeah, not me, until I see one of the guys on his way back there. My initial reaction was to wise crack: “just watch out for the big name in the backyard.” I caught myself though. Then they would have given me a weird look and would have backed up a couple of steps. Then I would have had to explain myself and how there’s a big name in the grass in the backyard and how I was being a wiseacre myself when I did it.

So I did the next best thing. I held back a snicker and said, “well, if you need anything let me know…”

 

That about explains it…

Lifting Up Serenity

I learned about Serenity about two weeks ago. There was a simple message in my inbox from a blog I subscribe to. It mentioned that a fellow blogger just learned that his daughter has leukemia. I went over to the blog and my heart has had a burden for this family ever since. Immediately I realized how I take my children and my family for granted. As much as I like to pick on Ashlyn on this blog, if she were to have a life threatening disease, or God forbid, worse, I don’t know what I would do.

 

How often do we choose work or tv or anything over our children? How often do we go to bed at night without having had a meaningful conversation with our spouse? How often do we not find the full enjoyment of being with our family? It could all change tomorrow.

 

Phil and Adria’s posts are heart wrenching and heart warming at the same time. I’m asking you to please go over and read Phil’s latest. If you’re so inclined go back to the beginning and get yourself caught up. Then pray for Serenity and her family whenever you think about her. I have been and it’s been making me take stock of what I really find important. 

Lifting Up Serenity –Serenity’s website and blog permalinked to Phil’s post I mention above. Click on the links you’ll see on the left to navigate the site. There’s a widget just below those links to donate to help Serenity if you so choose.

 

Now, go kiss your kids and thank God for every day you’ve had with them.

Open Letter to The Junk Mail Senders

I’m beginning to realize I love open letters. They let me get a lot off my chest. But they don’t seem to be positive do they? I’ll have to work on that.

 

NV of This D*mn House posted about Junk Mail and it made me think about how everyone I know is inundated with the stuff. And how no one I know appreciates any of it…or actually uses any of the offers put forth. I love getting mail. Have since I was a girl. It’s being ruined for me though. Since no one sends actual physical correspondence anymore all I have to look forward to are catalogs, bills and junk.

 

So here’s my open letter to all those junk mail senders:

 

OPEN LETTER TO ALL YOU COMPANIES/ORGANIZATIONS/CHARITIES, ETC THAT SEND MAIL

Just to let you know, you may consider the mail you’re sending to be informative. We consider it junk. You may think that once we read your plea for money there will be no way we can resist. We do. Because we don’t even read the letters. In this household this type of mail doesn’t even get read. Here’s what happens:

  • Vicki checks the mail.
  • Vicki sorts through mail.
  • Vicki puts all junk mail in one pile.
  • Vicki then rips envelopes in half resulting in the first part of the shred.
  • Vicki then sends everything through the shredder WITHOUT HAVING READ ANY OF IT!

 

Now, obviously there’s a reason you continue to send this stuff out to the American public. Either, your overhead budget is so high that you don’t care how effective your mail campaigns are, or there are some people out there who actually send you money, apply for your card, apply for your loan, etc. once they receive these pleas. Please give me their names. I’d like to teach them a little something…

 

Also, you owe me about $75 for a new shredder. I think that’s what they cost these days. My shredder gets choked up swallowing all the crap informative pieces of particulate I feed it. It’s your fault.

 

Shall we even venture to the topic of environmental waste? I’m not really green by any means. Maybe chartreuse. I do understand that you’re using a whole lot of paper = trees. Or are you more interested in the American economic system? Something like:

  • you buy paper and ink = $ into the system
  • you buy stamps = $ into the system
  • you mail them = work for mailman to do = maintained demand for mailmen
  • we open mail to shred = paper cuts = need for band aids = $ into the system
  • we shred mail and break shredder = need to buy new shredder = $ into the system
  • we go crazy posting about junk mail = need to visit “professional” = $ into the system

 

I get it now. Isn’t there a better way for you to pump money into the economy though?