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Sunday, May 22, 2011

Disneyland 2011 - Night before

Well the vacation is finally here!!! The 2011 Mason Family Disneyland trip. We are so excited to be going again this year. However this year we are all 1 year older, especially Aiden & Kyra. We're almost positive that this year it will be even more magical as Aiden & Kyra know more of the characters now and have watched just about every Disney movie imaginable.

It's also different because we're trying something different this year and that is not letting the girls in on where we are going. We have them believing we are going camping for a week. Haha. Mommy & Daddy are the tricksters in this here plot. And we've had our friends in on it too, saying such things as "What are you going to do when you're camping?" and other such questions. They are really excited about the idea that we are going camping. Jake said while he was putting Kyra down for her nap today that she was telling him all kinds of things she's going to be doing while camping. Such as roasting marshmallows, picking up sticks and rocks and sleeping in a tent and having a fire. Aiden's pretty excited too. She's looking forward to putting on her swimsuit and she wants to fish. Haha, silly kids.

So my friend Gail and I were trying to come up with some really great ideas for the roadtrip to entertain the girls for the 6+ hour drive. She went online and found some really awesome ideas. Games like fishing, guess what's in the bottle, Road Trip Bingo that I found printale bingo cards with road signs that the girls have to spot and put a star on each item (don't know how well that's going to go with Kyra). I found that printout on
Mom's Minivan website.


Also got this idea from the MiniVan site.
* Travel Tickets - Use some colored construction paper to cut out some "tickets" for your trip. Give your child a pre-counted baggie full of tickets. Every half hour (or every 30 miles) they can turn in one ticket to you. When their tickets are gone, the trip has ended! This really helps young children get an idea of how much time is left on the journey.

So my idea here is to give each of the girls 1 at a time at random and at random times. Since Aiden knows her letters I figured she might get it rather quickly...well sort of. I'm hoping Kyra won't rip them to shreads. LOL. So at the end of the trip, they'll each have 5 letters. These will then be part of the plan on Tuesday morning before we head to the park. (see last item on this post).
Chalk and black construction paperThis is another one we found online. Take magnets and use them as a fishing pole. We have this LeapFrog Fridge Phonics Magnetic Alphabet that normally goes on our fridge but we are going to use them for this game. Jake took 2 paint sticks and tied a 3 foot string and on the end is a magnet of each letter. The letters will sit on the floor in front of them and they can fish for letters.This one I cut out random shapes with my handy dandy Cricut machine and cut holes on the outerrim of the shapes. Found a red and green shoelace for the girls to thread through the shapes. Now if these don't make it through our trip without ripping, that's ok. I think the girls will enjoy this one.With this one I took 2 empty water bottles and filled it with rice and ten items. Pinto bean, paper clip, kernal of corn, safety pin, penny, dime, hard candy, red rock, button and elbow noodle. I will name off something and the girls have to shake, rattle and roll the bottles and see if they can find the item. Should make for interesting 30-60 minute fun time. OK, I'm pretty proud of this one. This isn't necessarily a game we'll be playing in the car but something we'll have Aiden & Kyra do right before we head to the park the morning of the first day. I found a current picture of the Disneyland park online and saved it as a jpg. I turned it into a photo and printed it on photo paper. Again, using my handy dandy Cricut machine, Design Studio and My Community cartridge to make it look like a puzzle. I will be scrapping this so we'll never forget this trip. I'm hoping the girls will recognize it and know where we're going at this point. But probably not. If not, more the better than to see it when we get to the park.

So ladies and gents, there you have it. Our night before preperations for our trip. I will be blogging everyday of our trip (hopefully) but if not, I'll be sure to send all the trip details when we arrive home if I don't get a chance to do it while on our trip.

Thanks for stopping by and we hope you will continue to follow us on this journey.

See you next blog.