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written by: natalie blue for mavisblue.com
 Full disclosure, Florida is my nightmare. I loath the droves of people that flock there each March to find refuge from the never-ending winter months. But, never say never! Now, with two kids, day care tuition and everything in between, Florida sounds unbelievably palatial--sign me up! Actually, anywhere warm sounds like a breath of fresh air after enduring the snow, wind and bitter cold of New England for the past four months. Are you with me? Pack up that car, charge up the technology and schedule that trip to see your 'snowbirding' parents, grandparents or basically anyone with a plot of swamp land in the sunny south! The GRISWALD's are coming to town! Now that we've decided on a family road trip, let's chat about the elephant in the room--where do we draw the line with technology and our little ones? We travel pretty regularly north [yes, I realize this is toward more cold] to Toronto from CT and until lately, we've done it sans technology. We did relatively well with art supplies, stickers and work-books and of course story books; relying heavily on a little help from our friends: Sharon, Lois, Bram, Raffi and of course, Kirsten Bell. But, when it was bad--it was REAL bad! Then, we discovered the iPad. AMAZING. Then we discovered wireless headphones. GAME. CHANGER. Even with a quiet, spa-like atmosphere to rationalize, I still felt guilty that the girls were watching hours upon hours of television while strapped in their mini-LazyBoys. "But what else are they suppose to do? They're sitting there anyway..." I hate myself just for typing that let along thinking it! I single handedly took the road trip out of road trip. They were in their world, mindlessly watching a movie while I was in mine--ZERO connecting was going on. Movies were great but I knew they weren't a fix-all. I needed a happy medium. In the end, we met in the middle--somewhere between movie coma and family engagement. We would alternate a movie with a game and found it was a much better balance. On your next road trip, here's a few great options to bust out between Inside Out and Monsters University? Try some of these games that worked really well for us and DOWNLOAD mavisBLUE's ROAD TRIP BINGO CARDS below (for up to four children). ROAD TRIP GAMES:
In addition to our games and movies, we also purchased little Carry-All Caddy's from Thirty One and filled them with a few key little gifts that we pulled out every few hours--crazy light-up pens, stickers, cute little pads of paper, markers and other dollar store trinkets. ROAD TRIP, WE'VE GOT THIS! Well now that your equipped with a few new ideas, I hope your trip is as seamless as ours usually is... You know: two adults, two little ones under four years old, a giant 100lb. dog, a cat who gets car sick, immigration lines...oh yeah, and, four passports from two different countries--easy peesy! Wink. Wink. What could be easier than that?!
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