So many adventures. So few times.

My photo
My life is pretty dull. I play with a toddler, watch a lot of Yo Gabba Gabba and experiment with the crock pot. I have no bed time and I find humor in Laffy Taffy jokes. Conan O'Brien is my anti-drug.

Saturday, March 17, 2018

Road trips and blind bags to boot



Kids are annoying.

Kids on road trips are annoyinger. If you are a mom or a dad or a grandma or a grandpa or an aunt or uncle or legal guardian or not legal guardian and are planning to be trapped in a motorized, non-flying vehicle with a short person under the age of, say, 30 there is a very good possibility you've googled the hell out of the term, "road trip with kids" or "entertaining kids on road trip" or "kids road trip hack" or "deleting browser history before road trip". Whatever, this is a safe zone and we've all done some variation there of.


Last year around this time we were prepping for our annual trip down to visit the giant red-pants-wearing-rat with his giant rat girlfriend and their various less offensive animal and overstuffed human friends and the husband was telling me all about his discovery of a blog. A blog! A real life blog, people!
But not just any blog!
A blog with hacks! Road trip hacks!!1!
Kidding, husband. I love you. Although you won't read this anyway.

This one suggested rewarding good behavior by letting your child pick from a small tray of treats or toys once an hour for every hour they are on the road.

Okay... but my kids are dicks. They are going to pinpoint all the good treats, and then once their favorites are gone they are going to go back to their dickish ways and for the other 92308293 hours of driving I will be crying and/or binge shopping on Poshmark (use code POSHBUFFY and get $5 off your first purchase, duh.) because kiiiiiiiiiids, man! Kids.

But our kids majorly love blind bags. Those little baggies you get at the grocery store or Target or Walmart near checkout lines with tiny little toys (usually duplicates) for quadruple the price of buying the same toy in a multipack a few aisles behind you. Yeah, those. The things that trigger the most epic of meltdowns. Snot. Violence. Words of unadulterated hatred. Death threats ...that's not even mentioning how the kids react when you tell them no.

So, me clearly being the mad scientist genius that I am, masterminded a way to make our own blind bags. Some have small toys, some have little treats. Kablammo! Kids gets their mystery prize, husband gets the victory of a successful blog search, I get 1-2 hours total of peace in a several (read: SEVERAL) hour drive.

Quick tutorial because it's easier to show. No, seriously, it is. Product idea links below!



Heat sealer used
Mylar "blind" bags
Example and Another Example of toys for blind bags
Bag storage

“Mom! I got Sixlets!” ... Gee, I wonder how those got in there. 💁🏼‍♀️