So, every year we take a road trip in the summer. Sometimes we take two, a short one just to New Brunswick for a couple of nights and a longer one to Ontario to visit my mother-in-law. This year we did one two week road trip, we went to Quebec for a week instead of New Brunswick and then on to Ontario. I spent months online trying to find ways to entertain my three year old daughter. I spent time on Pinterest for the first time ever. I do not like Pinterest. I am not sure who these people are on Pinterest, but it is near impossible to make anything half as nice as what they put up for anywhere near the price they say they paid to make it. However, I decided I wanted lots of distractions for my daughter so we wouldn’t have to rely entirely on the DVD player. So, what did I find?
I found a Lego kit, amazing, a small metal lunch box, some Lego and some felt, seems easy enough, and should be able to be made fairly cheaply. Not cheap. I bought a small metal lunch box at the dollar store for $3, peel and stick felt from Walmart for maybe $6 (I don’t really remember), a bag of random Lego at Value Village for $4, but then I had to find a Lego baseboard. New these are $10 which I was not willing to spend on this, they did not have any at Value Village, so I hit up Kijiji, this is not something you can find easily on Kijiji either, maybe because they are so expensive, I don’t know. I did end up finding one on Kijiji that came with a small amount of Lego bricks for $7, I didn’t dare say what I was going to use it for because they may not have sold it to me if I had said I was going to cut it up. I decided to use hot glue to hold it together, seemed like a good idea at the time, however, day 1 of our trip we had to pick up a double sided foam mounting tape for $2 at the gas station to fix it. So, for roughly $22 I managed to make a little Lego kit. It was worth it! She loves it and still plays with it now.
Lego Kit
I also found an activity binder. Filled with wonderful, quiet activities perfect for in the car. They used three ring pencil cases to put activities in the binder, everything was nicely organized. How could this be bad, and how hard could it be to find some fun activities to put in there? Well, turns out it could be very difficult. I wanted to have a magnet board so she could have some magnetic activities, maybe some letter and number activities, maybe put some magnets on the bottom of some animals so she could do some pretend play in the car without risk of losing the pieces. I could not find anything that would work for a magnet board, and by the time I realized I already had a magnet board in my house it was too late to make up any fun activities so she just had some random magnets to play with. I had a hard time finding three ring pencil cases, too. I ended up finding some at the dollar store but they were quite narrow so once I got the activities in the binder it was hard to close.
Inside the binder
But, I put in some small toys and finger puppets for pretend play; some craft sticks with velcro for building; some foam beads and pipe cleaners for threading with a foam bunny with holes punched in it and some string for lacing; some felt pieces to go with the peel and stick felt I attached to the back of the binder; a tic tac toe board that came from a valentine’s card that I laminated and used velcro to attach the X’s and O’s; a number page, also laminated with velcro for the pieces; and an I Spy bag that I made with glitter pebbles from the dollar store and some small toys from Value Village.
I Spy Game
Then, the binder I used also had a file folder part where I put some other activities. I put in a few books; a reusable sticker book; a sorting box with foam beads; a tin of wooden blocks that she got in her stocking at Christmas; a puzzle from the dollar store with velcro so she wouldn’t lose the pieces; and a notebook with paper for drawing and some markers.
File folder
So many things for her to play with, this should make the trip easy, right? Wrong, this was a bad idea. It was too difficult for her to get into and too big for her to keep on her lap. She used it when we were at our destination, but didn’t use much of it while we were driving.
Sorting Box
The sorting box was definitely a favourite. So, some of my work paid off, but not as much as what I had put into it. Next time I will just pick up some of those magic marker books and other little activities designed for in the car that take no effort on my part.
She also had her DVD player with lots of DVDs to choose from. I set it up so that I could put the DVDs in and start and stop the movies when needed. This was great because it meant that I could decide when she had had enough movies and I could also turn it off if she fell asleep. She brought along her LeapPad as well. Which was great until the batteries died and I realized I didn’t bring the actual charger for the LeapPad with us. We also had a great little Lego mp3 player. It was an amazing find. Remember that bag of Lego bricks I said I purchased at Value Village for $4? Well, inside that bag was this mp3 player. I erased all the music on it and put on songs that she likes. We spent some time on YouTube listening to songs to decide what she wanted on there. I think this accidental find was by far the best one for keeping her entertained on the drive!
Testing the mp3 player before vacation
But what about the baby? How will I keep him entertained? I looked all over the internet for ideas. There are no Moms posting fabulous ideas for entertaining an infant on a road trip. So, he was left with just a bag full of toys, mostly toys he had his whole life, but with one new toy, an O-Ball rattle. He loved this new toy, I am very glad that I bought it for him. But, being an infant strapped into an infant car seat, he was not able to dig through his wonderful bag of goodies to keep himself entertained. I had to sit back there with him and pull out new toys every so often, or mix him a bottle of formula. But, he did very well in the car for all that time, I can’t really complain.
In Quebec we stayed in a vacation condo so that we could be together with my parents, my sister, her husband and their four children. It was great, it is so much more relaxing to rent a place that is like a home rather than a hotel room. We were able to cook our own meals for supper and we could put the kids to bed without having to worry about keeping them awake as we lay in the bed next to them watching “grown-up” TV. There was no air conditioning and it was HOT, but it was adequate for our needs.
We did a lot of touristy things while we were there as well. We went to the Montmorency Falls, the cyclorama (waste of time), the church that was next to the cyclorama, the Aquarium du Québec, the Méga Parc which is an indoor amusement park in the middle of a Mall, Old Québec City and Valcartier Village for the water park. Aside from the cyclorama, these were all worth the trip. I was a little disappointed with the water park, being pregnant there wasn’t much that I was able to do there. But, in comparison to where we normally go the water park and the amusement park were amazing. The aquarium was impressive as well, it was much bigger than we had anticipated and we didn’t really allow ourselves the time to see the whole thing, but we still had a lot of fun.
Montmorency Falls
Ontario was amazing as always as well. We took the children to visit their Grammie and Grob. For Lily, anything with Grammie is exciting since she only gets to see her every couple of months. We did a lot of fun things while we were there as well. We went to the Ripley’s Aquarium and Canada’s Wonderland. We also took the kids to a river to play in the water with Grammie’s dog. We went up to Grammie and Grob’s camp and camped there for a night. We did a bit of shopping and went to a swimming pool. Both of the kids had a great time.
Enjoying a snack with Grammie at the camp