Our plan was to leave Portland after dinner and drive to Eastern Oregon to get a head start on the trip. But, we got the car packed earlier than expected so decided to leave before dinner and use dinner as a break to switch drivers.
With the amount of activities and snacks that are in the car to try to keep the kids occupied, I feel claustrophobic in the car. The kids have snack bins (which are mostly filled with junk food to keep them happy and not hangry); TV tables for drawing, eating, and watching on their tablets; and coolers in between them. One cooler is one of the many Amazon purchases that were arriving daily on our doorstep. Hubby thought it necessary to get a plug in cooler (which of course will only keep things cool while we’re driving and not when we really need to keep things cool when we’re parked on a hot day). The other cooler is multipurpose – while we’re driving, it stores cinch sacks of kid activities, such as games and books, which may or may not ever get used since they have tablets. It can also be used as a table top if the kids play those games together. When we’re not driving, the cinch sacks come out and it’s used as a storage bin for all of the electronics to keep them hidden and cool.
The kids were very excited to get on the road! That was mostly because they wanted to eat all of the junk food in their snack bins. But, even though the car was packed, there were all sorts of last minute things that we needed to do, like empty the fridge and take out the trash. Eventually, we headed out during rush hour traffic and they dug in to the chips and candy.
We figured that about two hours from home, we’d figure out what we’d forgotten to pack – there’s always something. Luckily (?) right when we were going through the tunnel, kiddo remembered she left her glasses case with her sunglasses on her bed. So, we turned around. Although we could have eaten dinner then, since the kids were loaded up with junk food, we decided to go back through rush hour traffic and make it to the other side of the city.
We picked up pizza and the kids ate at their tables, I balanced food on my lap and hubby ate while driving. Good thing I brought plenty of wet wipes. (Don’t worry, it’s not for his hands. It’s for me to wipe off the steering wheel before I need to drive again.)
