The car trip

So we made it back safe, sound, and sane from our nine hour car trip to Seattle and back. And boy did we have a blast! There is so much to tell I think I'll break it up into several days. So first for the preparations and car ride.
We packed the car the night before and went to bed at 8:30 so we could wake up at 1:30am and drive straight through! It was so worth it. We still got some sleep and the kids did go back to sleep after an hour or two of being amazed by the stars, moon and the simple excitement of being up in the middle of the night and heading out on an adventure. When they finally woke up it was breakfast time in Moses Lake with only about three more hours of driving. Then we broke out the activity bags. Here's a list of the contents:

• New special notebooks and new pencils with a sharpener that catches the shavings. Josiah spent some time sharpening pencils and drawing robots.
  
• Stickers
• Band aids just for playing with (this was a big hit)
• mini legos
• a cookie sheet for drawing on and putting the legos on
• Window stickers
• Kazoo's
• bubbles (for me to blow at them)
• sticky notes
• water bottles with a twist cap
• coloring sheets and activities. Check out this website.

Another great thing about leaving so early was that we arrived in Seattle before lunch and had an extra day to spend in the city.
Probably the best preparation I had was a diaper bag filled with individually wrapped snacks. I had TONS of them. The snack sized ziplocks worked great for trail mix, dried fruit, goldfish, cookies and m&m's. I also brought gogurt, string cheese, fruit leather and gum. I cold just throw one at them (literally) when they needed a snack. It was also fantastic for our time in Seattle. I would grab a few bags every morning, so when we were out at a museum or walking around I always had something to give them if they got hungry.
The other thing we kept saying we were so glad we brought was our huge double jogging stroller. It took up lots of space but because we stayed right downtown we did so much walking that it came in very handy. Isaac and sometimes Evie took naps in it while we were at museums or walking place to place.
The kids were fantastic the entire trip and everyone had such a great time. I'll tell more details and share photos next time.