I’ve had my normal summer schedule of camps and mission trips. But added to that mix have been three family funerals: my dad and my step-dad, and right now we are in Minnesota for the funeral of my wife’s mother.

Like I said, it’s been a crazy summer.

From our home to my wife’s grandmother’s house, near the Twin Cities, it takes eleven hours. According to Rand-McNally. That’s normal driving, with normal stopping. They don’t have an option to figure out how long it will take when you add five kids into the mix.

Needless to say, it took us a little longer…. Like three more hours. And that doesn’t even take into account the time spent at a tire shop on the way.

In a trip of that length, you need to have things for kids to do. A lot of things for kids to do. And since our kids are different ages, we had to find different things to them to do.

Here are some we came up with:

1. Benedryl. It was a quiet drive.

Just kidding.

1. School work. Hannah learned to figure interest, Lydia did spelling tests, Titus did math.
2. Horse. This is a new one for my kids. It’s simple. You compete, counting horses, each worth one, white horses worth ten. But cemeteries are deadly. If you see one, yell “Bury your horses” and choose who goes back to 0.
3. The Alphabet game.
4. I Spy. And a simplified version for my two-year-old, who calls everything yellow.
5. Slug Bug.
6. Geocaching. When we needed to stop for my wife to feed the baby, I would take the older kids out to look for a quick geocache in the area.
7. Nintendo DS.
8. Uno. Tough to play in a mini van.
9. Nap time. Road noise gets my kids every time. At least for a while.
10. Books. A trip to our library before we left was a great idea.
11. History Markers. If you don’t need to hurry, stop and take some of these in. It’s fun and educational, and you can log them at WayMarking.com.

I have a lot more ideas in my pocket, but these are some of the ones we used on this trip. It really helped to pass the time well.

What do you do (or did you do as a kid) to keep your kids occupied when you travel?  You can share your thoughts in the comments section below. 

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