Is yours always open? Mine definitely is NOT. I'm not a short-order cook, ha! Sorry kids! 🙅🏻♀️ I made these menus last year on one of our camping 🏕 trips when I started to get sick and tired of asking them what they wanted for lunch. Me: "hey what do you want for lunch?" *a couple seconds pass. "what would you like for lunch?" .... "HELLO?????" *kids still not answering.... grrr 😡 So I made these "Mom's Diner" menus. It makes it so much easier to get them to tell me what they want. They look at their choices, fill out the order form and then set it on the counter. Boom,💥 done. And for printing purposes, I made two menus to a sheet. All you have to do is download it, . . .
Summertime Daily Duties
My kids have been out of school for about 4 weeks, and of the 28 days we have been out of town for 17 of them and of the 11 days we have been home, they have fought 11 of them. Ha! Who can relate? To keep things in order, I made a SUMMERTIME DAILY DUTIES printable. You know to keep SOME sort of order while summer is here. I am a huge proponent of routine and although I am way more lenient in the summer, I still do think (when appropriate) a little bit of structure is necessary. Agree? Good, now we can continue to be friends. 👯♀️ Below is my SUMMER DAILY DUTIES sheet. Six (or seven) simple items to do DAILY. Simple and easy. I laminate mine and put it on a clipboard for . . .
Travel Lego Boxes
I saw this idea on Pinterest a couple years back and not till recently did I actually do it. We have SO many LEGO pieces and as you know I am constantly trying to find non electronic things to do for my kids. I put this on my instagram story thinking many people had seen this idea, but I was actually surprised when I got a lot of messages about how they loved the idea! Again, I can't take credit for it, all I can do is share the useful and helpful things I find on the 'net. I got all my supplies at Walmart. But you can get them anywhere. Here is what you need: LEGO platform boardStrong glue (something stronger than hot glue, I used Amazing E-6000 all purpose glue)Pencil case . . .
Road Trip Car Essentials
It's travel time! We do a lot of traveling, in fact when this blog post goes live we will have just finished a 16-day road trip that started in Zion (read my post about Zion here) and that went all the way to the Yellowstone area (I'll blog about that later). No long intro here, I'll cut to the chase. Here are my top road trip essentials. These items, personally, have made my our travel life MUCH easier. BACK SEAT CAR ORGANIZER I found these back seat car organizers on Amazon for just $21.99! They work super well in keeping things organized. Here is what I put in my back seat organizers: Tissues and napkins (napkins not shown)My ROAD TRIP PRINTABLES on a clipboard . . .
More Road Trip Printables!
Our summer road trip this year is heading up to the Yellowstone area (I'll be posting my itinerary later). Now that is a LONG a$$ drive so, of course, I made three new road trip games! 👊🏼 ALPHABET GAME Simple as finding (appropriate) things on the road that start with that letter! I personally don't like to make it a contest since my kids are different ages and my daughter has a slightly lower attention span. They get a prize if they simply finish it! Buuuut no copying each other! If you are of a competitive nature, you can make this game a point system. Give a certain amount of time and see how many they can get in that time frame. Double letters like "Subway Sign" count as . . .
Target Find It!
No one quite understands the pain of shopping at Target (or any other store for that matter) than a person with children. Even with a 9 and 11 year old, it is still a pain in the ass. I am a big advocate of allowing kids to be bored and I also have strong opinions about relying on electronics to entertain my kids. Don't believe me? I have other printables for road trips 🚗 and airports ✈️. 😀 But I understand those two printables are for specific situations, so I thought I'd offer another printable to use for everyday situations. And since I know the majority of my audience often goes to Target 🎯, what better printable to provide? To get this printable click here! 👉🏼Download You . . .
Airport Printables!
We just took a much needed trip to Cabo, it was delightful. 🌴And of course my kids asked me to make an "airport find it" game..... ok I just lied. My kids didn't ask me, I wanted to make it for them so they wouldn't be connected to the machine (aka any electronic) while we waited... only then to be connected to the machine again on the 2 hour flight. In fact, I had to bribe my tweenager son to play along. But you know what? He and his bestie ended up having fun. I wished I had taken some photos of them in the airport, but I didn't. So the printables alone will have to suffice. 😀 I made three of them, as shown below! And what better time to use these with summer travel coming up right . . .
Juice Box Wings
Say No to squeezed out juice from the juice box. The worst. Step 1: Pull the tabs up. Actually this is the real step 1: Tell your kids to hold their horses, you're getting their juice box. Step 2. Do the original step one. Step 3. Hand them the juice box and tell them to hold onto the 'wings'. Step 4: Don't clean up squeezed out juice. Happy Juice Box Drinking! . . .
Childhood Movies You Must Rewatch (with your kids)
If you're anything like my me and my husband, you randomly yet appropriately spout off a line from a childhood movie. *His favorite- "when the wave breaks here, don't be there or you're gonna get drilled* And if your kids are anything like mine, they look at you in complete confusion. My husband has for YEARS spouted off lines from different movies (mostly Goonies and North Shore)... sometimes most of the time out of the blue. And he most always ends in a 'literally laugh out loud' (to himself) moment. Movies of the 80s and 90s give us (middle aged *said apprehensively*) parents a true sense of nostalgia. I can't decide in my older age if these movies actually WERE good? or if because . . .
Road Trip Games
BINGO and FIND IT Dude. When I was a child we played two games- the license plate game (damn you Vermont) and the alphabet game (damn you x). But life doesn't have to be like that anymore. And it actually isn't in my kids generations because of ONE word- the MACHINE. 🤖 My friend calls all electronics "the MACHINE" and I love it. This includes but is not limited to: iPads, DVD players, portable video game devices, iPhones... you get it. And if I am being honest with you, I do like to have the machine as an option for a portion of the time in the car (good time for the hubs and I to actually talk to each other uninterrupted, can i get an amen? 💁🏻♀️) but that being said, I do think there is . . .
