Travel with kids: What was I thinking??????????????

Mush for Brains. That is me after driving 20 hours with four kids. Oh yeah and the last 7 hours of it was with a cute little flea infested terrier mix that we picked up on I-40. Barbara our therapist says "Why do you always complicate your life, your always adding more." I am thinking this is not going to go over well at my next appointment. Our heart is in the right place but our brians tend to be missing that part that screams at you "Your an idiot, you don't have a lot of money, you have four kids, one bathroom, two old cars and not nearly enough time to give another living thing."
So now I have four kids, (one of whom I adopted last December at age 10,three animals
(two found me and one I got by default) a 77 year old house in remodel, a job, several volunteer commitments, and a husband. Sometimes I scare myself. Deep breaths, count to 10 backwards, let go of the little stuff, and pray A LOT. Thats my formula.

Travel with kids:

1.Eating out cost a fortune even if its fast food with kids.
Prepare meals at your location as much as possible and pack food for the car.
Eat out but not every meal and eat at local restaurants not chains. Every one drinks water, share an entree with your spouse or a kid and the younger ones get kids meals. We visited Whole Foods in Santa Fe, Let me just say in Heaven this store will be there. It was awesome. I bought a ton of fresh fruit, organic milk and we sat down and chowed then put our recycables in the bins provided. We did the same thing at Cids health foods in Taos.

2. Give up and get the car t.v. for long trips. This is a life saver. My therapist even suggested this to me. Its not frugal but you can always borrow one. Ours comes out when we are not traveling more than two hours.

3. Find a place with a washer and drier close by when you are going to be gone a long time.

4. Free and cheap entertainment. We took lots of long walks, visited the local parks, went to the Local Library,visited a local thrift store and puchased 1/2 gallons of ice cream instead of visiting the ice cream shop @ $1.75 a scoop.

5. Find the local recycling drop off and take your recycables before you leave town. This was really frustrating for us because there was no place close in Red River N.M. I was going to hall it all back but we had no room left in our little van. It really upset me to throw out three bags of trash that could have been recycled.

Namaste'
Courtney