Oily & Non-Oily Tips for an Epic Road Trip
So back in June, my husband Nate and I went on a date night to a winery. While we were there, enjoying a delicious white with some goat cheese and crackers, we decided it was time to figure out how we would get down to the Gulf Shores of Alabama for Nate's brother's wedding. After checking on and deciding against flights, we opened up our Google Maps apps and planned an epic road trip. We would go from Virgina to Louisville, to the Gulf Shores, to Charlotte, and back home to Virgina.
As the road trip got closer, we got more and more nervous. Why did we plan this crazy long trip? 8 days away from home, with 4 of those days being 8+ hours driving days?!
Let's check on flights again.
Nah, we decided to pray it up, prepare the best we could and just do it to it. By the grace of God, the road trip went surprisingly smooth. Here's what worked for us, and a few things that didn't:
5 Tips:
1. Pray for wisdom before you go, pray before you start driving, pray for safety, protection, and joy in the journey. Pray pray pray.
2. Pack your oils. You're not flying. You're not limited on liquids. Pack all the ones you think you'll need. Here's ones we were really glad we had:
+Thieves - immune support holla!
+CBD Calm Roller - especially for the driver, focused and calm. No road rage, k?
+Digize/Tummygize - motion sickness, and all the support for a healthy digestive system. Road trips don't always involve a lot of veggies. So lay on the digize!
+White Angelica & Cedarwood - for sweet sleep. Sharing a hotel room with your kids requires reinforcements.
+Peace & Calming - diffuse it in the car, put a drop behind everyone's ears, be blessed.
3. Bring the technology. Quite honestly, we haven't used iPads with the kids in a couple years. We didn't love how engrossed our son would get with it. But for this trip we decided to bring the tech, and we didn't regret it one bit. We borrowed pre-loaded tablets from our library. They were AMAZING! Check to see if your library has them! No access to internet (praise the Lord), but they had age-appropriate videos and games that our kids really enjoyed. We also brought two portable DVD players that got their fair share of use! Also, audiobooks are fabulous. We listened to Chronicles of Narnia and loooooved it!
4. Pack food for the road. Pack lunches if you can. This will allow you to stop less, and drive more. Save as much time as you can! Pack healthy snacks, this will keep everyone's mood stable without sugar highs and sugar crashes. Apples, carrots, sandwiches, bananas, and pretzels were great options for us! Gas stations don't always have the healthiest snacks so plan ahead or stop at a grocery store when you can.
5. Pack plastic bags for trash, paper towels, baby wipes, Thieves Spray, and Thieves Hand Sanitizer. Helps keep the car clean and everyone's hands and mouths clean.
3 Lessons We Learned:
1. Don't expect great sleep the first night. Kids are resilient but they need a minute to adjust to the road trip and sleeping in a different place. If your kids still nap, they may not nap as long in the car. Its okay. Let go of their sleep schedule if you can.
2. Clean out the car every time you stop. We let our car just get trashed. Luckily my husband cleaned it the same night we got home, but it took him a looong time. We could have kept it less-trashy if we had tried a little harder.
3. Do laundry when you can. Lugging dirty laundry around isn't fun. We did laundry twice but should have squeezed in one more load. We had some wet sandy clothes from the beach, and those start to smell reeeaaal quick!
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