Road Trip with NO SCREENS !!

One thing that's going to make this road trip a little more unique and a little more challenging is that we are in the middle of a digital fast right now. How do you feel about that, Maya? Sad. In an attempt to make this screen-free car ride a little more fun, each kit is going to be starting with a clipboard with a pack on it and a pack of markers. I have one more trick up my sleeve for this screen-free road trip and those are these surprise bags behind me. Who's ready to see the snack bag? Me! I've got all sorts of goodies. Hey guys, thanks for joining us on Tic-Tac Toy Family today. Maya and I are busy packing her suitcase because we are headed on a road trip. Maya, about where are we headed? Black Mountains, North Carolina. That's right. We are heading out tomorrow morning so all the kids have been busy packing. I'm kind of double checking the suitcases making sure we're good to go and we're going to hit the road first thing in the morning. Are you all packed and ready, Colin? Oh yeah, it's full. I almost can't close. Did you pack too much? Yeah, I packed some four stuffy animals. I saw a lot of books in there too. Yeah, lots of shirts. I don't have as much as Maya. Lots of books and my favorite fragrance mist. One thing that's going to make this road trip a little more unique and a little more challenging is that we are in the middle of a digital fast right now. What's a digital fast? It means no screen no matter what. That's right. That means we're not going to be using our TV screens that we have in our car. We're not going to be using tablets. We are going to be driving five plus hours to Black Mountain, North Carolina without a single screen going. How do you feel about that, Maya? Sad. This means that I am going to have to be a little more creative than usual when it comes to the car ride and I have some fun ideas in store to help make the time pass and maybe we'll have even more fun on this road trip without screens. Just maybe. How's the packing coming? Good. So I was already packed but I want to like reorganize. In an attempt to make this screen free car ride a little more fun, each kit is going to be starting with a clipboard with a pack on it and a pack of markers. I found the coolest road trip packet on Pinterest. It's from which I'm going to link below. Let me give you a quick peek at what it includes because you might want to use that on your next road trip. The first page starts the travel diary. My favorite page is this license plate road trip game where you color in all the different license plates you find on your road trip. The last time our family did a screen free road trip we did this as well and we found almost all the license plates for all the states in the United States. I think by the end of trip we were only missing two or three. There's also a USA word search where you find all the state names. There's an alphabet scavenger hunt where you find things that begin with each letter of the alphabet. A restaurant roundup and that's basically where you try to spot all these different restaurant chains while you're on the road and cross them off as you see them. And the very last page is a color in slug bug you can find. I don't know if there's that many slug bugs on the road anymore but I guess we'll find out by the end of this trip. It is the morning of our road trip. Everyone just kind of running around getting everything organized. Last minute things packed. Now one of the most exciting aspects of a road trip in our family are the snacks and we generally have kind of a no rules policy for snacks for car rides and we allow all the sugars and sweets and all the fun stuff. So I packed some really fun snack bags for the kids which I'm excited to show them because I think they're going to enjoy it. Who's ready to see the snack bag? I've got all sorts of goodies. All right so we have Colin, Naya, Addie and Lily. I went to Five and Below to shop for the snack bag items and it was really fun because they just had a very very different variety of kind of fun unique candy and snack items. Now you can't have any of that until we're on the car ride so seal it back up. Another fun way to help pass the time is I went to the library and all the kids picked out a bunch of play-away books which are basically audio books. So each kid has one or two books of their own. They have their own earphones and we've got batteries for it so we have lots of reading that's going to be happening in the car ride. I have one more trick up my sleeve for the screen free road trip and those are these surprise bags behind me. So I have bags still kind of just like some simple fun activities and we're going to open one bag after every hour that passes until we make it to North Carolina. We're only going away for three nights guys but somehow with a family of six it feels like we're packing for like a month-long vacation. Hey did you start your candy? We haven't left the driveway yet. Who's ready for a road trip? Well we are officially getting ready to pull out of the driveway and it's time to pass out my travel diary. Colin here's one for you. What you want the blue one? Yes. I'm gonna do one too. Grab a color, grab a color. Pink, green, I get purple. I'm ready to start finding all the state license plates. That was fun last time we did it. All right we're leaving at 10 20. That means at 11 20 what do we do? Open the first bag. That's right. All right we're 10 minutes in Maya. What states have we already found for license plates? Alabama, Arkansas, California, and Tennessee. And on our fast food checklist we've already found a Wendy's, a Waffle House, and a Dunkin Donuts. We're on a roll with our license plate game. We just found Maine and New York which are pretty far from Tennessee. What are going to be the hardest ones to find Jason? Probably Hawaii. You might have some difficulty with that one. Alaska might be difficult. Good luck. If we find Hawaii, we're gonna celebrate. We're gonna celebrate if we find a Hawaiian license plate. Colin are you moving on to your audio book? Which one are you gonna listen to? It's 11 20. What does that mean? We get to open the first bag. One hour. Colin you wanna do the honor? Open the first bag. What are they? Sharpies. They're not just any type of sharpies. What do you think those are? Window markers. They're window markers. Hear all the colors. So the first bag is filled with window markers. They are neon expo markers that are designed to write on whiteboards, windows, mirrors. I love how bright and colorful they are. I'm doing all of the Taylor Swift albums and I'm gonna put some decorations around them so I have a Taylor Swift window. What are you all diving into right now? Pop rock. We're not even two hours into our ride and where are we stopping guys? Buc-ee's. If you don't know what a Buc-ee's is, a Buc-ee's is like this amazing place that's like gas station, it's food stop, it is feed-a-bite clothing, we have clothing feed, home decor, they have home decor. It's open 24 hours and you basically have to stop at a Buc-ee's if there's one on your road trip because it's just a road trip stop. You gotta go to Buc-ee's. Although I think it's more of a southern thing because when we lived in California and Arizona we had no idea what Buc-ee's were but they are a big thing out here. The bathrooms at Buc-ee's are like as big as our house. And it's the cleanest bathroom. Yes. As you can see Buc-ee's is swarming with people. It is packed in here and it can definitely be a little bit overwhelming for someone who is a Buc-ee's newbie. What's your favorite Buc-ee's find? Well you can't go wrong with the jerky. They've got tons of varieties of jerky and I also like the candied pecans. I'll get a couple of those too. What are you getting for lunch Maya? A pulled pork sandwich and Buc-ee's beaver chips. Beaver chips. That's right. What'd you get for lunch? A chicken salad wrap. All right. Southwest wrap. Banana pudding is calling my name. So the Buc-ee's clothing is very popular where we live and I have known some people where pretty much the only thing they wear is Buc-ee's stuff. So I mean I think Buc-ee's is pretty extreme in Tennessee. Now we have to get beaver nuggets. It is like their most popular snack here. So we're gonna go find them. Here they are. Buc-ee's beaver nuggets. And if you need home decor they have all that as well. I'm in the home decor section right now. All right guys I just need a little bit of arm twisting to buy that extra fudge. Oh Lily's gonna twist the arm. All right I guess we're getting fudge. Oh that fudge looks good. Good arm twisting Lily. I think we're ready. Got my fudge. A little crazy. This should last us the next three hours. It is 2 20 now. Who's doing the honors for two hours? Zest. Zest is a game that I learned to play at school and it's really fun. It's the wacky would you rather game and I got the wild green version with random world adventures. If animals could talk which do I think would be the rudest? A. Cats B. Seagulls or C. Hippos. I reveal your answers. I chose B. So Maya thinks I'd say seagulls. Collin what did you think I'd say? Hippos. How do you think I'd answer Jason? I would go with hippos. They're all wrong. I thought A. Cats. What? Does that surprise you? Yes. Zest is just a four player game at the moment because we've lost Addie to sleepiness. She's down to sleep in the back and Lily's enjoying her audio book. What time is it? 3 20. Lily's turn to open. Back it goes. Oh it's like a bunch of magnetic games. I call hangman first of all. Snakes and Ladders. Magnetic Link 4 and Magnetic Matching. These magnetic games were a good find at Five and Below. What are you doing Collin? Playing a fish game. You're gonna go fishing in the car. Yay. Addie what are you and Lily playing? Hangman. Hangman that's a good one. Maya what one is that? This is Snakes and Ladders. I think it's like a chutes and ladders type game. Yes it is. Out of the red zone and then we just have two hours and 10 minutes left. I'm setting up a magnetic memory game for Maya right now so I'm tear these apart and put them down. Having trouble catching fish Collin? Yeah. We have an hour and a half left. We left home almost four hours ago and we are still in Tennessee. Tennessee is a long state. How's everyone hanging in there? Good. Not good. Not good. Ready to be there Collin? Yeah. Yeah I bet so. I'm so stiff right now. Lily went back to sleep it looks like. I just need lights here and Maya's busy doodling away. Welcome to North Carolina. We just crossed into North Carolina and it's about 4 20. It's 4 19 now. Still 4 19 now. 4 20 that means it's time for another surprise. Four hours. Addie Rude it's your turn. Can I open it? That's so sweet. Addie you are a sweet big sister. So each kid got a play-doh super cloud slime. How do you feel about that Jason? It's your car. I already have one slime staying in the back. Hopefully we don't add four more to it today. We just found Connecticut. We have 13 license plates left to find and only about 35 minutes left in our trip. I don't think we're gonna find them all. Well our car is officially trash guys. Not my fault. I cleaned up my area. But it's now 5 20. We only have about 15 minutes left but it's time for the last one. All right. All right. Okay. Okay. A caboodle brain teasing puzzle. Yes. Oh my gosh. These are canoodles. I found them on Amazon. They looked really fun so I thought we'd check them out. I think they would be great for like restaurants when you have time to kill waiting for your food or waiting to get a seat. But hopefully they will help keep us entertained for the last few minutes of this car ride. We arrived and we survived our screen free road trip. Now if you want to see where we are in North Carolina you're gonna have to watch the next vlog. XOXO. Bye.