Preserve Memories with a Travel Journal

I love to scrapbook and create pretty things. I have started making travel journals where I write down things like where we ate and take a lot of photos. I love to design the pages and add all the cute things I can find. Sometimes I just add shells I found to the pages.  I wish I would have started doing this earlier in life. I also scrapbook old photos from trips too.

Noah loves to make his own travel journals. He loves to write notes and reminders. He is a pretty good photographer once he stopped taking pictures of the tv screen. He is learning a lot. He has quite the talent for writing and photography. He already makes fish journals and space journals. He is a great illustrator too. I can't wait to see what he creates for our next trip. It's also a great way for him to remember trips we have been on.  My grandma Rose used to write down everything. We still have her travel journals. That's where it really started for me. They used to go cross country in my aunt and uncle's RV. My Grandma Rose's journals were so detailed  it felt like you were there. She didn't skip a beat. I love to read them even now. I can imagine my grandchildren looking at my travel journals some day, imagining they are off with me on one of my adventures.

Check out my post on how to create your own travel journal.

I used to be the Car Sick Queen

I used to be the car sick queen. I used to throw up every time we were in the car for an hour or more. I vomited almost every time we drove to my grandparents. I was getting really good at vomiting in a plastic bag. I hated it. I guess it started when I was two. We went to Santa Claus Land and I got so car sick that my mom had to throw away my car seat at a rest stop in the trash can. My mom said it smelled too bad to keep it.

Noah is unfortunately following in my footsteps. It's become a running tally about how many states Noah has thrown up in. My mom used to give me car sickness medicine hidden inside a spoon of peanut butter.  I used to not be able to swallow pills so this was her "remedy" for this. I still can't eat a spoon of plain peanut butter without gagging. I really think that car sickness is something you grow out of as you grow up. Hopefully Noah will get over his bouts of car sickness soon.

Check out my post about preventing car sickness for tips and tricks.

Sheilacakes Family Travel Traditions

Traveling traditions are great. Every time I hear the phrase travel tradition, I think of the movie Home Alone 2 because forgetting Kevin has become a Mcallister family travel tradition. My family has always had travel traditions. We always listen to the same music. Even now, we still listen to Billy Joel and Carly Simon when we travel as a family. When I was a teenager and in my early twenties, I used to collect shot glasses. The best places to get shot glasses is in souvenir shops. I didn't use them I just liked to collect them.
My Grandma Rose collected salt and pepper shakers and postcards from her travels.  My Grandma Rose and my Grandpa were always traveling somewhere out west. We also found salt and pepper shakers for her when we were traveling. We would send postcards too. We used to always get a new book or magazine when we traveled. I really want to start this tradition with Noah soon. It was pretty neat to get a special book just for our trip. Sometimes it was a coloring book instead.  Do you have special travel traditions?

Check out my post for more ideas for travel traditions.

Do you Know any Backseat Drivers?

I used to hang out with a group of friends and we would go places together. We would go out to eat all the time and even went on vacation once. It was a lot of fun most of the time, however one of my friends was a horrible back seat driver. He always would say he knew the best way to get somewhere. I sometimes wondered if he was listening to a police scanner or if he was tapped in to the traffic report around town. This was before apps and most smart phones. Sometimes he was right, but other times we would end up in construction or stuck in traffic. He really thought he was always right. It was pretty annoying to go places when he would start driving from the backseat. Sometimes we would have him drive because it was just plain easier. It was his fault if the traffic was heavy since he picked the route. He wasn’t really that bad, and he was a great guy so we put up with it. If he wasn’t driving he was in charge of the directions. However that wasn’t a perfect plan either, as we got lost a few times. Honestly it was fun though. I miss hanging out with them and even hearing the backseat driver chime in with his opinions about the best way there. I remember being excited once when I knew there was only one way to get somewhere.  

Through this experience I learned ways to deal with backseatdrivers and I can’t wait for you to check out my post.

They Named the Town What?

Sometimes I can be immature when it comes to humor. I love laughing at silly things that someone my age probably shouldn't. It's not anything hurtful. I don't make fun of people. I remember when I visited my friend Logan in North Carolina. We were going on an adventure and we stopped at a gas station in the town of Blowing Rock. I am not sure why I thought it was such a funny name for a town. I think it may have been because it was in the mountains. The town was really cool. I really enjoyed it. I miss my friend Logan a lot. We were really close up until his death. He always had a smile and a kind word for a friend. He was so amazing and such a sweet soul. Except for the time he made me eat livermush. Maybe I wasn't so bright not realizing it was actually liver and not just a cute southern name.

I am always reading signs and usually telling Noah where we are when we travel. Some town names are odd. It can be fun to take turns calling out town names. It's also great for when you are playing the city alphabet game. I will warn you that you may have to whip out Google to prove it's really a town name. You could also see who can come up with the funniest or strangest town name. Have you ever visited a town with a funny name?

Here's an article I wrote about funny town names.

My Carpool Memories

One of my favorite experiences was my carpool in eighth grade. It was such a fun group of kids. We were really close because we went to and from school together every day. If I didn't find the carpool I would have spent a lot of time before and after school waiting for my mom. So it was really a blessing. It was also so much fun getting to know them. Some of us hung out other than being just in the car. My friend Jamie was my favorite person in my carpool. We still talk on Facebook now. She lives in another state but I hope we can get together soon. It's been such a long time. I remember when her mom would drive, we would go to Taco Bell a lot after school. Her mom had the coolest van and there was even a TV and VCR in it. This was before everyone had TV's in their cars. The other kids in my carpool were cousins. I was kinda close with the other girl, she was kind of trouble. I used to go to movies with Jamie all the time. I remember when we saw a movie at the mall downtown. I don't know if she and I would be as close as we were if it weren't for carpooling. Her birthday that year was so much fun. We were playing Girl Talk and we had to ask her neighbor for ice. I don't think we got the ice or not. I think we all took the zit sticker.

I highly recommend carpooling to work or school. Your kids can make lifelong bonds and make some great friends. It's also a blessing to help someone who maybe works earlier or later than school hours.

For more information about many benefits of carpooling see my guest post.

I Wish I had Satellite Radio Growing Up

When I was young, we had a whole bunch of tapes that we listened to. I remember searching for tapes in the glove box so we could sing our favorite songs. If our tapes broke it was definitely a tragedy. My sister had a habit of taping over things too. It would make me so sad.  She even would tape over home movies and my concerts, but that's another story. Days of our Lives was not more important than our childhood memories.

Sometimes we listened to talk radio like Dr. Laura or Dick Crum. We would be in the middle of listening and it would start to fade out. We wouldn't be able to listen if the next area didn't carry that show. We couldn't Google it on our phones. We were SOL. Now there's satellite radio. Everything is done by satellite and it doesn't matter where you are, you can get the stations. You don't have to play guessing games where the stations are. You can find whatever you want to listen to. You don't have to worry about your sister taping over your music. Satellite radio is something I think everyone needs.

Check out my post about all the benefits of satellite radio. 

I Love Travel Movies!

It's no surprise that I am a huge movie buff. I will talk movies with anyone. It's one of my favorite things to do with family and friends. I also make many movie references and quote them quite often. I also love to travel so movies that feature traveling is a win win in my book. You have a couple different types of travel movies, the funny silly ones and the serious dramas. I had a lot of fun creating a list of road trip movies. There is really something for everything. They are mostly for adults though. I was able to even use a couple of my favorites. One of them is a lesser known weird yet amazing movie that I randomly saw on broadcast TV years and years ago. I was just flipping channels and I didn’t even have cable.  I immediately fell in love with it and ordered it from Amazon that night. The other is a newer movie, that I heard wasn’t too great. I ended up loving it and have watched it every time it has been on HBO.  I think that it's fun to share ordinary experiences with movie characters like traveling. Flying wasn't as popular when I was growing up so my mom, sister and I spent a lot of time in the car. I have luckily only had a few weird experiences while traveling. Nothing compared to the movies on the list. One year we were on our way to Gulf Shores and had to take shelter from a tornado in a Dairy Queen bathroom. I am from the Midwest, so I know tornado safety in my sleep. It's engrained in us from birth. That's probably the craziest thing that has happened to me traveling. We have also ended up in other states but that's no big deal.  

Check out my list of great road trip movies.