Getting Ready To Hit The Road

This week has been primarily about getting the house clean, the yard ready for winter, attending Brady's last 2 football games, and getting all packed up and ready to hit the open road once again.
We are leaving for Florida on Saturday morning!

We're in the middle of one of the greatest fall seasons that I can remember, and although I love that, I'm still longing for a few more days with temps in the upper 80s, so we can swim and sunbathe once more before winter hits.

For this trip, we'll be gone for 8 days. Of those 8 days, 4 of them will be travel days. Sound awful? Not for us. We all enjoy our travel days--seeing the scenery (especially this time of year with all the beautiful fall colors), stopping for gas and food in new places, and just spending a ton of time together as a family.
Since we'll be traveling for 24 hours each way, I try hard to pack accordingly. Each kid gets to bring along a backpack with fun things to do in the car, and they all love having them as we travel.
Since we are in the car for SO long, we also bring along the portable DVD player and Nexus 7 tablets. After all, they do get tired eventually and need something more relaxing.

Here are some pictures of the boys' backpacks almost ready to go.

 

Brady's backpack



Logan's backpack

 

Marshall's backpack

I had to include this last picture too. This was Logan and Marshall playing ships (colanders) and tug boats (measuring cups), with rubber spatula railroad crossings, and wooden numbers for freight. I came upstairs after cleaning in the basement to find them doing this :).