We’re BIG fans of road trips and since getting my hybrid a few years ago, we’ve road tripped more than ever because it’s just so affordable and easy. My RAV4 is super reliable, it’s comfy, and it fits everything we need perfectly… Pair that with amazing fuel economy and we really have no excuse to NOT take road trips. (You can check it out here.) One of my favourite features of the particular model I have is the touchscreen infotainment system with Apple Car Play integration (hello, big clear navigation maps, Siri commands, hands-free calling and texting, JBL sound system, and multiple front and back USB ports!)
If you follow along over on Instagram or Facebook, you know I’ve been lucky enough to work with Toyota Pacific for the last three years and they’ve generously sponsored this post. They also have a fantastic giveaway happening right now, so be sure to read all the way to the end for details on how to enter.
We road trip A LOT and I love it. Our kids are great travellers and we all love adventuring and spending time away from home from time to time. Before heading out, I always prepare a few different things to listen to while road tripping and it makes long drives so much better! Here are my go-to options for things to listen to while road tripping with kids…
I know that it’s sort of hard to believe {even for me!}, but this past weekend I went out for a good 5 hours all by myself {the perks to having a NICU babe – he’ll happily take a bottle!} So what did I do with my time? Well truthfully, I got groceries and did a little bit of shopping, but since I went across the border, it meant Trader Joe’s and Target, which is super exciting in this mom’s books. ☺
It’s no secret that we’re big music lovers in our house… If we’re at home, it can pretty much be guaranteed that there’s some sort of music on. Sometimes it’s the radio, sometimes it’s ‘adult’ music, and sometimes it’s kids’ music – so long as it’s not the ‘drive mama crazy’ variety. ☺
Gracen absolutely cannot get enough of this song lately. We’re talking on repeat, every single awake moment of every day if she could. She first heard it 10 days ago, and she’s pretty much got the lyrics nailed. {I don’t blame her though… I quite like it too.}
Our girl is a true music lover. She just adores music. When given the choice, she’ll almost always choose to watch a music videos over a kids’ shows, she memorizes faster than I can, and it’s rare to find her not dancing, singing, or holding a microphone of some sort.
This afternoon, she watched these two videos back to back several times. She strategically placed her plastic golf club in a blanket to create a mic and mic stand and strummed along on her guitar while practicing the words. If I would have let her, she probably would have watched until dinnertime. And I don’t blame her… Watching these sisters sing almost always brings shiver bumps to my arms or tears to my eyes. How it’s possible to have that much talent at that young of an age, I don’t know. Blows me away every time.
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Oh. my. goodness. Does our little lady ever love to sing! For the last few weeks, she’s been grabbing wooden blocks, carrots, and whatever else she can find to use as stand-in microphones for performances of ‘We Are Young’, ‘This Girl is on Fire’, ‘Trouble’, and other favourites. The thing is, she’s very serious about it all. She has to be in a certain spot, she has to have a microphone of some sort, and it has to be a song she knows well. Her vocals are accompanied by emotion, hand gestures, and dance moves that prove she’s been studying the artists closely while watching their music videos.
In light of her new love for singing, I decided to get her a microphone and knew Etsy would be the place to go. Sure enough, after a quick search, I found the perfect one… Handcrafted and made of wood, finished with natural oils only, simplistic, and requiring zero batteries. My kind of toy. I put the order through, received a shipping notification within 2 days, and it arrived quickly. Plus it’s absolutely beautiful… Doesn’t get much better than that. I’d highly recommend checking out the shop it came from (Wee Woodworks) online. Their animal-shaped percussion instruments are ridiculously cute too.
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Yesterday I introduced my little lady to the beautiful nesting babushka dolls my dad brought back for me after one of his work stints in Russia… Today, Bradley introduced her to his childhood guitar (which for some reason, she calls a ‘dahk-tar’). It’s been a couple of very special days.
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Miss G’s been a big fan of this song for quite a while and now that they’ve started playing it on our local radio station? Well she’s pleased as punch.
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Today as I was organizing the mess of mason jars in our hallway catchall closet, my curious Miss G spied some old wine gift tubes in the bottom. Naturally, she yanked them out and began drumming on them.
Before long, we’d yanked out all kinds of pots, containers, and bowls out and created an impromptu drum circle for the budding musician in our family.
Maracas, rhythm sticks, wooden spoons, a xylophone, and background music were added in along the way too.
Perhaps not the most neighbour-friendly activity if you live in a small apartment or have basement tenants below you (ours weren’t home), but great fun for a rainy day.
Here’s our little musician jamming out…
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She spent the holidays singing this song for nearly anyone who’d listen, and believe it or not, it’s still alive and kickin’ even now in February (with killer dance moves no less).
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This may be a video only a mama can sit all the way through, but every minute seriously melts my heart. Especially around 4:35 when she attempts to convert her ‘3’ into a ‘2’. ☺
Miss G has been a fan of Taylor Swift’s ‘We Are Never Ever Getting Back Together‘ for a long while now, but just recently she’s taken her sing-a-longs to a whole new level. If you’ve ever seen the video, you know that it starts and ends with Taylor sitting in front of a window and for part of it, she talks into an old-school cordless phone.
Well now, when this little monkey wants to sing one of her very favourite tunes, she must be standing looking out a window, and she must have her ‘never ever phone’ in hand.
Miss G is currently in love with this song she affectionately refers to as “Girls ‘Tainer (container) Song”. She loves it so much in fact, that nobody is allowed to sing along. If I absent mindedly find myself quietly humming along with the tune, I’m promptly reminded “No Mama sing. Just girls sing.” Well okay then…
After stumbling upon this post from The Imagination Tree a little while ago, I knew we had to try making rain sticks of our own. We had a few really heavy duty cardboard tubes already on hand (two from rolled art paper and one from our Stuck on You parcel – review to come soon!) and since we’ve recently been collecting and making instruments for Gracen’s collection, it was the perfect project.
To get started, we collected a bunch of things from around the house… An assortment of pantry goods (beans, rice, and popcorn seeds to be exact), a hammer and some small nails, these duct tape sheets Grae picked out on our most recent States trip, some fluorescent dot stickers for decorating, and the cardboard tubes of course. (We also got out a Sharpie, a pair of scissors, and a small tin can out part way through the project.)
Here’s a better look at just how sturdy our tubes were. Like mentioned on Imagination Tree, ordinary paper towel and toilet paper rolls are not thick enough and won’t work for this project. Basically, you want your tube to be sturdy enough to withstand nails being pounded into it, and sturdy enough to hold the nails in afterwards.
Although this next part was a little too tricky for Grae to do on her own, she sure enjoyed helping. Using flat-headed nails that were almost as long as the diameter of the tube, we pounded them into the cardboard roll at random intervals. What worked best for us was hammering the nails in together using a hand-on-hand technique or having Grae hammer nails that I’d already put halfway through.
Here’s what the inside of our tube looked like once we’d finished with the hammering job. Of course, the more nails you add, the slower the beans or seeds will move through the tube, meaning a longer ‘rainfall’.
Next, we traced the end of our tube onto the backside of a duct tape sheet together two times and cut the circles out.
Then, using a small tin can, we traced and cut out two larger circles too.
In order to seal off the end of the tube without having our seeds stick to the duct tape, we placed the smaller circle in the centre of larger circle (sticky sides together).
Then carefully placed and sealed the larger duct tape circle over one end of the tube.
Next, my little helper chose her filling (popcorn seeds) and added a few handfuls to the tube. (She wanted the tube to stand on its own without falling over and was having no luck, so she quickly went and retrieved this mason jar from the kitchen… Of course, being her mama, I thought this was quite brilliant.)
With our seeds added, we created another double-layered duct tape circle and sealed off the second side.
At this point, you could really decorate the outside of the rain stick with anything, provided you ensure the nails are covered and cannot be removed by curious little fingers. We decided to use our duct tape sheets since they secure the nails and look pretty all at once. The bonus was that they were also the perfect width to fit the length our small tubes, so all we had to do was cut them in half to avoid wrapping around the tube more than once.
I positioned the tube onto the duct tape paper and Miss G gave it a good roll.
And there you have it – a fluorescent pink and leopard print duct tape rain stick!
Of course, nothing in this house is complete without being plastered with stickers, so on went a bunch of fluorescent dots.