weight loss with pregnancy hormone drops | Back to the real military

weight loss with pregnancy hormone drops

When I first started this blog, my husband was in college taking mechanical engineering classes. We had newborn twins, a 2-year old, and I needed an outlet. I felt like my life revolved around schedules-- my husbands schedule, our newborn twins schedule, and our toddlers schedule. (Then we added a puppy to add yet another schedule-- house training a dog. Go figure!) Since I had put my degree on hold when my husband started college (under a rigorous timeframe imposed by the Navys STA-21 program), this blog was a great way for me to do something I loved. I missed writing. Blogging about our life as a Navy family helped give me structure.

I really enjoy blogging. Over the past couple years Ive written about the things that have happened to us along the way: infant twins to toddler twins and now 4-year old twins, homeschooling, moving across town and moving to a new duty station, making new friends and moving away from dearly loved friends. Ive written about our second miscarriage and subsequently dealing with a molar pregnancy. I have been moved to tears by the emails Ive received regarding that difficult stage in our life; it is amazing to me how many of my friends have had miscarriages that I never knew about. It helped me to put one foot in front of the other when I had friends helping me navigate the months following the molar pregnancy. It was hard for me to write about it; I doubted several times if I should hit publish. It was so personal and close to home, yet the stories that people shared with me made me so proud that I had posted my experience.

As Ive blogged about our life, bursting at the seams with these 4 busy boys of ours, I knew that we were living in a little bubble. The military, while always nearby, wasnt involved too much in our life. In North Carolina, my husband mustered with them several times a week for PT and before his classes. We had balls each year and award ceremonies, but those are the fun aspects of military life. His schedule was slammed, which was expected because he had to complete his mechanical engineering degree in 3 years per the STA-21 program. In South Carolina, it felt like we started getting our feet wet with military life again. He went to power school and prototype. The rotating shift work started with prototype and I balked. The rotating shift work in prototype was different than the rotating shift work on a fast attack submarine doing pre-deployment work-ups, but it was still rotating shift work and it reminded me of what we were heading back in to. Now my husband is at SOBC (Submarine Officers Basic Course). In SOBC, he has a very different schedule than with power school and prototype, but we are states away from each other. While he is up in Connecticut at SOBC, I am staying with my parents and doing life with 4 children.

Our oldest is 6-years old and really missing his daddy. He doesnt know how easy we have it right now with SOBC. My hubby may be stationed in Connecticut for the next couple months, but we are able to video chat with him almost every night. He calls me on his lunch breaks. While it is not the easiest drive to make, he can drive and visit us on weekends (there is a great comfort in having the option to do something, even if it isnt practical to do every weekend). Hes already come to see us one weekend since hes been there and we have another visit on the calendar. This SOBC schedule is not a submarine schedule. I know that; my husband knows that. Our children, who miss their daddy right now-- today-- do not know that. They dont know why we have packed up our things from South Carolina and moved states away to my parents house. They hear us talk how we are moving to Washington state and the concept is foreign to them; they dont know what that means and they long for familiar things. Where are their bikes? Why cant they play outside with their friends from South Carolina? Why isnt Daddy here to take them outside and throw ball with them? Where is their playroom? Why are they sharing a room with me here at Marmie and Papas house? Our 4-year olds have off days and miss their daddy. Our 6-year old is hit with it like a ton of bricks. The other day he started sobbing that he wanted to go play with his best friends in South Carolina and that he wants Daddy. It breaks my heart.

I know it breaks my husbands heart as well. He isnt here to hold his children and comfort them when they miss him. Even harder is when he video chats with them and they say those sweet, heart breaking things, "Can we move back to South Carolina now?" It is hard to explain the "whys" of our life to the children at these ages, 6-years old and 4-years old. We tell them that we are moving because Daddys job is in Washington state now. We are staying with my parents before we move to have some fun at their house for a couple months. Daddy has to go to a school in Connecticut and will be back when he is finished to drive us to our new house. We let them video chat when they want to see his face. We tell them the same things and reaffirm how much we love them and want to listen to them. We tell them we miss their old friends too and pull out paper to draw their old friends pictures. We set up routines here and try to implement familiar routines and schedules. But it still just feels heartbreaking sometimes, navigating them through all these transitions.

Here, now, at my parents house, I worry so much about what I will do when I am across the United States from my parents. They have helped so much. When I feel overwhelmed by life (for instance, last week when I came down with a really bad cold that is still holding on), they step in and take care of the boys. Every night my dad puts our 4-year olds to bed while my grandmother puts our 6-year old to bed. Im able to sit with my mom as she helps me get things for the next day together (clothes for the boys, lunch/snack for our kindergartner) and put the baby to bed. When the boys are having a rough day, each of them have someone to hold them and comfort them. If my lap is full, they can sit with my mom, my dad, my sister, or my grandmother. When our 4-year olds are napping, my grandmother can walk to the bus stop and pick up our 6-year old. When the baby is crying, my sister is here to finish up the evening bath with the older 3 so I can tend to the baby. When the boys are bouncing off the walls, my dad can take them to their gym class so I can make dinner in peace.

When I think about Washington state, I think about how life was on a fast attack submarine before we had 4 children; our oldest was just a baby then. I think about how life was with 4 children as my husband went through power school and prototype. I think about how life would be for me right now with him in SOBC if I didnt have the support system from my parents... and Im nervous. We wont be able to video chat with Daddy while hes gone on a submarine. We wont be living in the same house as my family and able to have someone else manage the school pick ups and drop offs if Im overwhelmed. We wont have someone there to step in and do bath and bedtime with one set of children while I put the other set to bed. We wont have a multitude of adults to choose from when our oldest is having a hard time and misses his dad; my dad wont be there to step in and say, "Hey, come help me with this," and take him off for some much needed one on one "man time."

I have a feeling that this blog, originally started to focus on our life as a military family (much emphasis on family), is going to involve a lot more of the military aspects as military life encroaches on the relative calm we have achieved with our boys. (I say relative because life with 4 children, I doubt, is ever calm and then throw in the fact that we have a towering 6-year old and rambunctious 4-year olds and that calm is just gone.) I have a feeling we will be talking about dealing with childrens emotions when Daddy is underway and balancing a household with the Navy schedule and how to maintain a sense of normalcy. Ive been pouring over one of my favorite Navy wife blogs, "Keep Calm and Have a Cosmo." She is full of tips for managing a family as a military spouse. Ive been sensing the shift in our own family from "pseudo-civilian life" to "real military life," as us military families rarely consider shore duties and training commands "real" military life. While we have dealt with many challenges over the past couple years unique to military life as he went through college with the STA-21 program and then the training pipeline, I know we arent back in "real" military life yet; as the spouse who has lived through life on a fast attack submarine, I know we still have it good. It has been difficult supporting our children through this transition, as we are still in the midst of a PCS to Washington state (house packed out, living with family, hubby at SOBC, cross country drive with 4 children in less than 8 weeks). It has been hard balancing all the moving parts of this PCS myself, even as a military spouse on my 5th PCS.

Reading my old blog posts, it puts in stark contrast the subtle shift that has been taking place in our home. I see clearly where we were then to where we are now. I can picture what it was like as my hubby went through college. I see the small changes in how our household operated as my hubby went through power school and prototype. I see now how different it is here, especially for our children, as their daddy goes through SOBC. I know the next big change for us will be boat life once we reach Washington state. As we navigate this new chapter in our lives, I am very glad to have this blog, not just as the outlet that it has been for me, but also for the support I have received from my fellow bloggers and my readers. I love when a friend emails me or says to me, "Hey, I had the same experience!" I love the links to similar blog posts, "Here is how we got through the same thing.." I love funneling my thoughts into one blog post (then debating whether or not to publish it) and connecting several communities of women. It makes me so happy to hear from working moms, stay-at-home moms, moms of multiples, moms of singletons, civilian moms, military spouse moms, and even military spouses without children, who relate to the challenges of moving and making friends and balancing the military with the rest of your life. Thank you to all my readers and thank you to all who comment, message me, and share my posts.

As we move from this bubble we have been living in back to the "real" military, please hang with me! Keep the messages coming and sharing your stories. I love hearing from you.

How have you transitioned back to boat life from an extended time away from it?

How have you helped your children deal with the transition back to boat life? Or through a difficult PCS?

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slimming world pregnancy weight loss | Prototype in South Carolina

slimming world pregnancy weight loss

Im starting this blog post off with a disclaimer: this was my experience as a Navy spouse as my husband went through prototype, another school in the nuclear Navy officer pipeline-- not his point of view, but mine. These are my thoughts and words, not his.

My husband is prior enlisted. When he went through prototype this time around, he had already gone through prototype before {as enlisted}; he had already been on a submarine; he had been in the Navy for 10 years. He went through the STA-21 program {more blog posts on that under "Military Resources"} and is going back through the pipeline as an officer. I felt his prior experience would work to his advantage in prototype and at least give him more time with our family than he had while in power school {read the "Power school" blog post}.

Students in prototype are on rotating shift work. The shifts are roughly these times, depending on which boat you get on and various other factors:

• Days {day shift or first shift}: 7 am to 7 pm
• Swings {swing shift or second shift}: 12 pm to 12 am
• Mids {mid shift or third shift}: 8 pm to 8 am

*Note on shift hours: you need to add about an hour before and after these shifts because often they have to go in that much earlier and stay that much later for trainings and turning things over to the next shift.

As of right now, there are two prototypes, prototype in upstate New York and prototype in South Carolina. We went through prototype in South Carolina and I do not know how true all of this rings for upstate New York.

In South Carolina, there are two operational submarines {called boats} used for prototype. After the first 7 weeks of prototype, the classes are divided between the 2 boats. Even though the students are in one class, the submarines operate independently of each other and the training for the students on one submarine does not affect the training for the students on the other submarine. What I mean is, if the submarine you are on assigned to breaks down {as it did for us}, you do not get to go train on the other submarine until yours is operational again. While we were there and our boat was shut down, the students on the other boat kept moving forward and graduated on time while our graduation date was pushed back to graduate with the class behind us.

The first 7 weeks of prototype operate on a Monday through Friday day shift. After the first 7 weeks, rotating shift work starts. The shifts last 7 days and are 12 hour shifts. Here is how the schedule works:

• 7 days of days
• 2 days off
• 4 days of training {"T-week," which has the same hours as day shift}
• 4 days off
• 7 days of swings
• 2 days off
• 7 days of mids
• 2 days off

When shift work starts after the first 7 weeks of prototype, each of the students get assigned to a crew. Whatever shift your crew is on is the crew you will start shift work in on week 8. Some students actually started on day shift. We started shift work on swings.

The nice thing about shift work is that once it starts, you can mark your calendar from week 7 of prototype {you find out your crew around week 6 or week 7 and the shifts you are on around then} all the way to the graduation date. Because thats your schedule. And the first 7 weeks of prototype are days, so you can plan on that too. I liked that much better than the uncertainty of the study schedule in power school and felt like I saw my husband far more in prototype than I did in power school.

The first 7 weeks of prototype had to be 12 hour shifts. He spoke to his advisor and, after the first 2 weeks of prototype, he was allowed to come in early so he could leave early. With 4 children, arriving home shortly after 7 pm-- the busy hour of baths, pajamas, and stories before their 8 pm bedtime-- was crazy and chaotic. For the first 2 weeks of prototype, he came home to roughly 45 minutes to an hour of epic meltdowns. Over tired and excited children glad to see Daddy, tired from their day and resisting bedtime, to be bathed and put in bed by a hungry and exhausted Daddy. When he could go in earlier for his 12 hour shift, it was much better; he started going in between 5 am and 6 am. Even getting home at 6 pm gave him time to change and eat before the bedtime hour started. My husband wanted to help with the bedtime hour on those shifts because that was his only interaction with the children during day shift; on days he left before they woke up.


My husbands prior experience did work to our advantage in prototype; he spent most of the shifts on reduced hours. If students are a certain distance ahead of the curve in prototype, they are awarded reduced hours, which, depending on how far ahead of the curve they are, are either 8 or 10 hour shifts. Reduced hours made shift work far more bearable. On day shift, I asked him to be home by 6 pm, for the reasons stated above. On mid shift, he would leave for work after the kids went to bed at 8 pm. Most of the time he would go in at 10 pm, but, if he was really busy at work, he would go in at 9 pm. I loved mid shift. He would sleep in our guest room during the day, which was removed from the rest of the house, and sleep pretty much "work hours," 9 to 5, wake up in time for dinner, play with the children and then put them to bed, and then he and I would have time to curl up on the couch and watch a show together.

Swing shift was my least favorite shift. There was no good time to go in for swing shift. If he did reduced hours and went in at 2 pm, our whole morning routine was thrown off because we were hanging around the house until he woke up around 10 am and then we would hang around with him until he went in to work at 2 pm, which was about the time our toddlers went down to nap, which forced us to linger around the house even longer. It threw off the rhythm to our day. Swing shift kept him away on the busiest part of the day {evening hours} that was only made harder because our whole routine was thrown off by that awkward morning lingering {4 children off schedule = disaster}. He tried doing reduced hours to see us more, but eventually I told him that the reduced hours just made it harder. He used swing shift to work and stay ahead of the curve. The only nice thing about swing shift is that I used swings to schedule all our doctors appointments. I would schedule them around 10 or 11 am, after he woke up, and he would go in on reduced hours. We always tried to be home when he woke up on swing shift so the children could see him.

This is when we were exceptionally glad we homeschooled and had the flexibility to adjust our hours to be home with Daddy. If you look at the schedule, there are off days in there. Many of them arent actually off days, but days to help transition your sleep schedule. Here is a breakdown of the sleep schedule on shiftwork:

Days:
It was hard not to look at days as a day shift, "Oh, yay! Hes working regular hours and I will see him regular hours!" No. When he was on days, he had just come off mids so he was tired and grouchy. He went to bed at roughly the same time as the children and sometimes staying awake all the way until 8 pm was a struggle. There were times where he went in the boys room to read them a story and I found him asleep on a twin bed with the boys climbing all over him.

2 day {The 2 days off in between days and T-week}:
This was our weekend. More often than not in fell on a weekday. Since we homeschooled, I never did school with our kids on these days, weekend or weekday. We usually ended up doing errands or put-off projects on these days, which I think is what most people do on these days, but parents with 4 kids definitely do on these days. These are the days that were either filled with car maintenance, doctors appointments that we worried would be too long to squeeze in before swing shift, and various other house projects. Rarely did we not have something along those lines on a 2 day. I do think that is normal with family life, though.

T-Week:
This is training week for the staff so the students had to go find other sections staff for their qualifications. This didnt affect me at all, as the spouse. During T-week, his sleep schedule was almost normal for a "regular" day shift.

4-day:
4-days were lovely! Mostly because swings come next and so he started really trying to stay up in the evenings. These are the nights of movie watching, no school days {homeschooling, remember?}, and playing outside {South Carolina, remember?}. Again, generally we had something going on {we have 4 kids}, but they were still something to look forward to and very much enjoyed, far more than the 2 day, which always felt like an awkward weekend...in the middle of the week.

Swings:
The weird thing about swing shift is that he was almost the most "normal" sleep-wise. He was most alert, most rested on swings, but we saw him the least. He only had to stay at work until midnight and then he came home and went to sleep, at least, the first part of each swing shift. The last part of swing shift is totally awkward. He starts trying to stay up later in preparation for mids, so he his rising time is later: 8 am, 9 am, 10 am... 10:30 am... and that time between the time he rises and the time he leaves for work shrinks... and he gets home after we are all in bed. I will also add, in my Navy wife experience, all bad things happen on swing shift. This is the shift that you will get a migraine; you will forget your ID at home and thus cannot get back on base; your children will all get sick; your best friend will have distant relatives in town and so cannot come over each evening to calm your nerves. This kind of stuff only happens on swing shift.

Swings to mids rotation:
These are the off days in between swings and mids. When I first saw these on the calendar I thought, "Aw, how lovely to have all these off days built in our calendar!" Nope. These are basically sleep days. The crews usually meet up in the middle of the night to help each other stay awake, such as meeting up for pizza or to play basketball. I never went to any of these because 1. I am not a bat, awake all night, and 2. We always have kids sleeping at home. I do know that some significant others did go with their military members to these get-togethers, but as the parent watching the children, I never did. During the day on these rotations, he slept. In the evening on these rotations, he was tired.

Mids:
Since he put in so much work at the end of swings and the swings to mids rotation, he was fairly prepared for mids each time. My husband has a gift for falling asleep. I am not saying that sarcastically. I do think it is a gift as a submariner. He can sleep just about anytime, anywhere. He had no problems sleeping during the day and no problems sleeping in our guest room with the children home. As the parent awake with the 4 children making noise as he slept, I did worry they were waking him or that he wasnt getting good rest. However, he always assured me they were fine. I started trusting this and letting the kids live their lives as normal. I said it before, but I loved mid shift. I looked forward to putting the kids to bed each evening and our time together to watch a movie and hang out without him being tired. When he left for work at 10 pm, this was the time that I was heading to bed anyways and so I didnt really think of this as time away from him. I didnt like sleeping alone and sleeping alone bothered me far more in the past. Living on base with 4 children, a cat, and a dog in the house, across the street from my best friend and her husband {who was on a different shift than us}, helped me feel far less alone. I did miss falling asleep next to him and one mid shift I made the error of reading a scary book, but, in general, I slept fine. I do know that mid shift wasnt his favorite for his sleep schedule, but he did enjoy our time together and the time with the kids. He came home just as the children were waking up and spent all evening with us.

Mids to days rotation:
These days and the first part of days were enough to make me doubt each time if I really loved mid shift as much as I thought I did. Man, these were tired, grouchy days for him. He would try to stay awake as long as possible, but it was impossible, even with the children distracting him. He was so tired. I tried to leave him alone as much as possible on these days, no planning anything that could wait.

"Thanks," you say, "for the sleep schedule. But what is prototype? How do you pass it?" Im not even going to pretend that I understand exactly how the system works to get qualified at prototype. Here is a very simplified version of the process:

• You do computer check outs to see if you are prepared enough to monopolize an instructors time for an actual check out where you can get signatures for your "qual card" {qualification card, which is actually a ginormous book requiring upwards of 650 signatures}.
• You must complete all the computer check outs.
• You must get all the signatures.
• There are verbal check outs with the instructors and then there are check outs where you have to stand watch.
• There are smaller watch standing check outs and bigger watch standing check outs. If you are in charge of the watch, you are the Engineering Officer of the Watch {EOOW}. That is a Big Deal and deserves a special dinner the first time you stand it.
• You have to take a comprehensive exam which takes about 8 hours to complete. This is a Pretty Big Deal and also demands a special dinner after you pass.
• To graduate prototype, you have to stand a watch board and, the very last thing, the oral board. These are Even Bigger Deals and sometimes people fail them. They get about 2 more tries if they fail them. These deserve Big Celebrations after they are passed.
• After all that, your crew goes out to a celebratory dinner together in which everyone takes a cab home.

Besides the sleep schedule and the check out process, there is the boat schedule to contend with. When he started prototype, we thought with his prior experience that he would be qualified quickly. I briefly mentioned before that each class gets divided between the 2 boats. Our class had a January graduation date. Our boat broke and our grad date floated around for a long while before finally being pushed back to join the class behind us for the March grad date. The people in our class on the other boat did graduate in January and went to the February SOBC class. Since our grad date was pushed back to March, now he is in the April SOBC class. The boat schedule is frustrating. I especially disliked that when a boat is shut down, you cant get quals on the other operational boat. You are just stuck sitting around doing what you can until your boat gets running again. Prototype is supposed to be 24 weeks long and it took us 32 weeks due to the boat we were on. Not only did he not qualify as quickly as we thought it would take, but he stood rotating shiftwork 8 weeks after his projected grad date.

Around the time you start rotating shiftwork, week 8, you put in your Dream Sheet, which ranks your duty station options and boat types 1 through 10. Around week 20, 4 weeks before graduation if your crew is on schedule, you get orders with your duty assignment {read my blog post, "Submarine officers JO tour dream sheet" for more information on duty station options, etc.}. Some people have already gone through SOBC and will report to their boats immediately after graduation; some, like us, have SOBC after prototype and report to their boat after SOBC. When our boat shut down and our grad date got pushed back, the orders for our class were taken away and reissued. It was such an uncertain time. We had to cancel a house hunting trip we had planned over one of his 4 days; I ended up flying out to our next duty station to go house hunting without him because he cant take time off in prototype. It was a mess. It was made messier because we didnt know what his grad date was, what SOBC class he would be in, if our orders would stay the same. I got our house ready in January to pack out early February. Then our orders changed and we ended up packing out in March. I am glad that is all over.

Prototype, to me, started out far better than power school. I loved the reduced hours. I loved knowing exactly when he would be home and what his schedule was for the next couple weeks. I loved the 4 day weekends and being able to schedule doctors appointments when he would be home to watch the children. However--big however-- by the time it was over, I was over prototype. I hated the uncertainty at the end. Are we moving now? We had written and cut orders that changed. Are we going to the same boat? Same state? What SOBC class will he be in? When can we go house hunting? How much longer will he have rotating shiftwork? I had anticipated rotating shiftwork until-- at the latest-- his grad date in January, not all the way until March. I didnt ever quite grasp how the system worked to get signatures and what you were supposed to do when your boat was shut down and so, to me, it often felt disjointed or that nagging feeling of, "Surely there is a better way!" {Perhaps that is my mom-of-4 organizational skills kicking in, attempting to find the quickest and easiest system.}

I often had that feeling in prototype that I was being impatient, that boat life is harder than this. That I needed to take a deep breath and enjoy him being home. Our last boat was a fast attack submarine and that life was so up and down, in and out, nothing but uncertainty--never being able to count on him being home, always having my plans cancelled. Needing him, needing a day with a him, a night with him, a moment with him-- preferably when it could be us, not us where he is tired with gray circles under his eyes and Im frazzled, but us how we are in my mind, how we were. And when I compared prototype to boat life, I felt guilty. Boat life was so so so much harder. I knew I had it better in prototype, yet I struggled so much with the desire for this ever changing grad date, the tedious rotating shiftwork, the endless move preparations {with 4 children underfoot!} to be over... I thought of the loneliness and isolation of boat life, not being able to tell my family boat movements. And, yet, I was impatient. It was one of those times as a Navy wife where the grass is greener and yet you know it is not. You know the next thing isnt better than the current thing, and still you long for a change. Im terrified to get back on a submarine, now with 4 children instead of 1 like last time. Im sure when he leaves on that first underway I am going to cry thinking about warm South Carolina afternoons where he was working on a project in our garage and our children were riding bikes around the driveway while I sat and drank sweet tea watching our life march forward...

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weight loss with pregnancy hormone | Preparing our cross country drive

weight loss with pregnancy hormone

Are we crazy? I dont know. We are in the midst of planning our cross country drive. My hubby is at SOBC in Connecticut right now and I am staying with family. In a few short weeks we will be loading up our vehicles and driving across the United States of America, east coast to west coast.

With four kids, the oldest being six and the youngest being 11 months.


Im freaking out.


It sounded like an adventure before, but the more I look at all the work we have to do to pack for the drive, plan the drive, and then make the drive (with 4 kids), the more my stomach turns to knots and the more I just want to bury my head in the sand.


Why did I agree to this?


I was going to fly... we were going to ship my van... and now we are driving both our vehicles...


But here we are. My husband appealed to my sense of adventure. I agreed. We have a room full of things to pack at my parents house. We have two vehicles to drive across country. We have a game plan and it is almost time to execute it.


Since we are taking both of our vehicles, my hubby and I will be caravanning. We plan on splitting up our 4 children, he with 2 and me with 2. We also think that we will be able to move the car seats around on different days if that helps with sibling fighting, though to start we are putting our 4-year old twins in the Jeep with him and our 6-year old and infant in the van with me. Im hoping our 6-year old helps with the infant, since has done that on past road trips. We are estimating this to take us 5 or 6 days. Before this road trip, our longest road trip with children has been 8 hours on Google Maps, 12 hours actually driving it.


What am I doing to get ready for our drive across the United States to our new duty station?

1. Packing
   Before my hubby finishes SOBC, I am trying to pack everything that I can. Since we moved to my parents house around January, we have small winter wardrobes here for myself and our 4 boys. I also have a bin of the next size up summer clothing for baby #4. I spent the other morning rolling these clothes from the 3 bins they previously occupied into one large bin. (Let me tell you... rolling clothes compactly with the assistance of two 4-year olds and an infant takes a long time.) Im trying to get those kinds of things packed now so that when my hubby gets here, we can focus on packing the clothes we will need for the drive (and the clothes we will need before our HHG are delivered).
   
2. Collecting entertainment
   Im trying to gather things to help keep the children entertained on our drive. With 4 children, I would really like to avoid markers that can stain (or just make a huge mess). Id also like to avoid things with too many pieces that can fall off their laps or trays easily, such as markers with lids or play sets with lots of pieces. It is very frustrating having 4 children crying for things that have fallen every couple miles. Thanks to my helpful friends on Facebook, Im feeling much more confident about our entertainment grab bag. Here are the things that we have collected so far for our non-electronic entertainment grab bag:
   
   -Water Wow by Melissa and Doug: the cool thing about the Water Wow compared to Crayola Color Wonder is that the Water Wow pen is refillable and never dries out. The color sheets can also be reused once they dry! Amazing! I think these will be a step up from the Color Wonder pages that we have used in the past.
   
   -Melissa and Doug Reusable Sticker Pads: my boys love these pads. I found the scene pads, like My Town and Vehicles, because I think they will be able to play as they do those. We have other Melissa and Doug Reusable Sticker Pads that we love, such as the Make-A-Meal, but Im hoping these scenes can help ignite a little imaginative play as well. I chose pads that they dont already own to bring in the "new" element on the road trip.
   
   -Fubbles Bubble Light: I never would have thought of bubbles. A friend suggested bubbles and Im running with it. I think bubbles will be great at rest stops as well as in the hotel rooms. I also picked up bubble refills so we are never out of bubbles (until one of the children dumps the bubble solution, but, well, you cant win them all, eh?).
   
   -Melissa and Doug Secret Decoder: I bought some additional Water Wow books for our twin 4-year olds, but I thought they were a little young for our 6-year old. I found these Secret Decoder books and picked him up two. Hes recently told me that he is going to be a scientist detective, so I think they will be right up his alley.
   
   -Usborne Build a Train: Im obsessed with Usborne. I feel like they just get together and decide on amazing books that children will love and then that is exactly what they make. Im pretty excited about these build a train books. I found these Build-a-Train books for our 4-year olds and the next level up Build-a-Train book for our 6-year old.
   
   -Usborne Moving Sticker Book: Even more exciting of a find is this Usborne Moving House Sticker Book. I love it. It talks about packing up the old house, moving to the new house, and putting your things in your new house. It will be a great conversation starter with our boys who are very nervous about this move. I picked up one for each of our 3 older boys. Such a great find for our military family!
   
   I found these things at a local childrens toy store that offers a buy 2 get 1 free on Melissa and Doug pads and On the Go books-- a perfect sale for shopping for my older 3 boys. This store also sold the Usborne books. Im still gathering things like these magnetic play sets and a few more Usborne drawing books/sticker pads, but I think our non-electronic entertainment bag is set! This should hold us over for our road trip as well as when we arrive in Washington state and are waiting for our HHG to be delivered (and while we unpack! *shudder*)
   
   For our electronics, we have the usual DVD players, one tablet (for our kindergartner), an iPod (again, for our kindergartner), and books on tape. I love books on tape. Im borrowing the Harry Potter audiobooks from my parents for our drive. Jim Dale is such a fantastic reader and the boys and I love listening to him. It is enjoyable for me as the driver to listen to audiobooks as well, far better than listening to DVDs loop over and over again. A friend of mine also reminded me of the Disney Song and Story CDs. These were popular with our oldest when he was a toddler and I had completely forgotten about them.
3. Booking hotels... kind of
   Ive booked the hotels for the first half of our trip since we have a couple stops we want to make and not a ridiculous number of miles between those stops. For the second half of the trip, we plan on driving each day as far as we possibly can, so weve made a spreadsheet with possible hotel stops for us; we plan on making reservations as we go, calling from the road.
   
   The important thing when booking a hotel in advance is to book DIRECTLY WITH THE HOTEL, not a third-party site. KNOW THE CANCELLATION POLICY. I chose hotels with a 24-hour, no deposit cancellation policy, meaning I can cancel the hotel room UP TO 24-hours before the reservation without consequence. I have a list of the hotel reservations Ive made with phone numbers and confirmation numbers so if anything changes, I can call and cancel or adjust our stay.

Have you ever driven across country before with or without children? What did you do to make the drive better/easier? What are your road tripping tips with children? Please share with me! :)

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