Getting Ready For Our Family Vacation

SHHHH.... What I am getting ready to share with you is a secret for my kids...until Sunday anyways.  I have been putting together a few little treats for our road trip.  It is 6-7hrs. one way.  We are all so excited.  The kids each have thier own large back pack that they will bring with in the car.  I told them that on Saturday they could pick a couple of things to go in them but then I get the backpacks Saturday night and they don't get them back until we are in the car Sunday afternoon.  I did this last year for our plane ride to South Dakota and they loved it.

Here is what I came up with so far....trying to be creative and frugal.  Each gift will get wrapped and numbered.  They get to open one each hour-two hours. 

The first treat is they each get their own $5.00 gift card to QT (Quick Trip).  Jay had told them on our way out of town we could stop and they could each get a slushy drink.   The kids love gift cards and I thought this would add to the fun so they can get their drink and also pick out a pack of gum and another treat as well.

 

School supplies are still on sale here and even getting marked down more.  So I picked up a box of crayons (.20cents each) and a pack of colored pencils (.50cents each) 4 durable 3 prong folders and made their own Disney coloring/activity books.  I found tic-tac-toe sheets, make the square, a map of the US for spotting different license plates and lot and lots of Disney character coloring pages all for free.  I just had to print them out.

I also found these great activity books for $1.00 each and got Anastasia a Sudoku book .

Then of course we have the parent sanity box...I mean DVD player in our suburban so they can watch some movies as well. 

Ok now the one thing they do know about is their autograph books.  When we went to Disneyland last time Anastasia was 7 and Joshua just turned 2.  So we bought Anastasia an autograph book and it was very cute with the princesses and had a place to put pictures.  I know it cost anywhere from $10-15.  Well now we would have to times that by 4.  So we made our own and they turned out really cute.  I cut 12x12 carstock into 8.5x6.  They each picked a favorite character and we found colored clip art on line and printed it out to put on the front cover.  I laminated the front and back cover and we bound them (Our church has a binding machine).  I still had laminating paper.  So I only spent $8.00 total on cardstock and then probably another $8.00 on stickers.  Each night back in the hotel they can decorate thier pages with stickers from who signed their books and we will print out the pictures when we get back home.

Not the best picture but this is all 4 books

Here is one opened

I have Tinkerbell and princess stickers as well but the girls have already run off with them.  I have to get them back! 

I will do another post later tonight or tomorrow about food that we are bringing along to keep costs down.  As far as food goes even if money wasn't an issue (LOL) we couldn't handle eating out all the time.  I think we would get sick.  If any of you have suggestions besides sandwiches and read this before we leave please let me know.