Guest-blogger today folks! Allow me to introduce my brother Kevin. As my shoulders slowly reach my ears over the thought of spending a long period of time in the car with Grace and Edie, he thoughtfully compiled some amazing childhood memories of our own road trips with our parents. Read on.

Have a super-awesome 7 hour trip. Instead of trying to figure out how to keep Grace and Edie occupied why not just do what our progressive parents did:

-keep all of the windows closed at all times to avoid a stiff neck caused by the breeze coming in the window;

-provide them with one poster (the kind with the black "velvet" outlines) to colour. This should take up about an hour of their time. Oh, and make them car sick;

-let them listen to their Walkman. But only give them enough batteries to last 4 hours. And don't buy them more batteries. They're expensive you know.

-power through the 7 hours and don't stop at restaurants, roadside attractions, bathrooms, scenic lakes or anything else that might disrupt the schedule because we all know that getting there on time is more important THAN ANYTHING IN THE WHOLE WORLD;

-keep a barf bowl handy. Preferably a green plastic one that, no matter what you do, will always smell just a little bit like vomit;

- yell at them every once in a while and make sure that they know that there are lots of little children in the world who would LOVE to be going on vacation but they can't because they don't have parents who love them. This is especially good for their self-esteem later in life;

-play "eye spy with my little eye". Always good for hours of driving fun. This will be fun for Edie since she's so good at focusing on one task for an extended period of time;

-provide them with plenty of liquids. Half a can of pop each is more than enough for a 7 hour road trip;

-be sure to make them share a seat in the van. They're sisters and they love each other very much so they'll be happy as clams sitting right beside each other for 7 hours. Remember how much fun WE thought it was??

Good luck!

So thanks Kevin, I am feeling oh so much better about the road trip now, and whatever I do to my kids in those hours that we are confined to the mini-van cannot be worse than what we went through.