Road Tripping With Kids - Sharing My Favorite Game

We live in the Central Planes area of Texas, to put that in a word, it's flat here. Any hills we go over here are the type that take less than one-Mississippi to get up and one-Mississippi to get down.

When I was little, I lived in about the same place. Still flat. One of my favorite things about going to my Grandparent's house in Missouri was the drive. Not the length, 6 hours in a car when you're 10 without modern electronics can be pretty dull, but the hills.

We'd go up, and every time we'd go down I thought I was on a rollercoaster. This was especially fun when riding in the back of the station wagon without a seatbelt, but, the laws have changed since then.

We were on a drive between Virginia and Niagra Falls, NY and found ourselves in 'bodunk' Pennsylvania. The kind of towns without pay-at-the-pump gas stations, where the cashier would just turn the pump on for you and trust you to pay. That is when there were gas stations which proved few and far between. I had checked the route for travel times, but I had no idea that PA had no major north to south roads that would get us where we were trying to go.

But go we did anyway. Through twisty country roads with big hills, the kind you could easily go down and get to ten-Mississippi. I was driving, and most of the car was carsick, but the ones who weren't were attuned to the constant complaining about the windy, hilly roads.

So I made a game out of it.

We talked about when I was a kid and I pretended it was a rollercoaster. At the grave risk of someone puking in my car, we rode up and down and around the corner. I let the van coast on the downhills - we'd found out that our new-to-us Ford transit maxed out at 65mph right after we left the house for our 4000+ mile roadtrip - and we hit record speeds on those downhills before the engine's management system kicked in and put the breaks on.

The result? Well, no one threw up which I consider a win. My five year old loved it. Instead of complaining with the rest, he started talking about the roller coaster. Quite frankly, we've been back home for a few weeks now and he's still talking about the roller coaster. The other kids had fun with it too, and we road those roller coasters at 65MPH all the way home.

Let's raise our coffee mugs and call it a win,

Kristian

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Kristian is a mom of six, Program Manager by day, active Professional Photographer by trade, and a big believer in finding beauty in the everyday chaos.

Life in our house is loud, messy and full of literally everything. Love, noise, laundry, laughter, and definitely could use a bit more grace. I'm happily married to my best friend, grounded in my Catholic faith, and fueled by five to six hours of sleep per night and adrenaline.

I try to find joy in the everyday — even when it's wild, because without the little bit of joy, this life would be unbearable. This space is for the moms in the middle of it all: the ones juggling family, faith, work, and wonder. The ones that need someone else's messy life to make their own seem better or somewhat normal. You're not alone, and you're doing better than you think.

Welcome to Six Sweet Smiles — where we celebrate the mess, the miracles, and everything in between.