Vacation on the Brain

We're just a few weeks away from embarking on our summer vacation -- travelling more than halfway across the country and back again over a period of nearly 4 weeks! I've really enjoyed reading various friends' blogs and am inspired to chronicle our family adventures in more detail than just sharing posts and pics with friends on Facebook. So, internet access permitting, you are invited to journey along with us as we go on our crazy, Saiki-delic road trip!

But since I'm too obssessive-compulsive to wait until we're actually "on vacation", I'm sure I'll be putting up posts in the meantime. For me, researching and planning are almost as much fun as going. And this trip has been in the works for more than a year, so you can imagine how hard it is to contain my excitement now that it's almost here!!!

I've been trying to come up with ideas to help the boys look forward to spending countless hours staring out the window at wide open spaces of nothingness, um... I mean, visiting lots of cool and interesting places. If they could actually learn something along the way, that would be even better!

To pique their interest, we've been watching movies that were set in locations we're going to visit:

Devils Tower, WY

Black Hills, SD

Mount Rushmore, SD

Hopefully my sons picked up some valuable tips on how to sculpt with mashed potatoes, discover hidden treasure, or survive an attempt on their lives by a cropduster. Now if only I could find a PG-version of National Lampoon's Vacation, they could even become adept at tying a corpse to the top of the mini-van...

The boys were far less enthusiastic about learning some U.S. geography and the state capitals -- that is, until M found out that he had to do it for school anyway and was, therefore, already way ahead of his class without having to do any more work. And, as much as I would like to believe that they're reading the biographies I checked out of the library on General Custer, Crazy Horse, Buffalo Bill Cody, Calamity Jane, Annie Oakley, Teddy Roosevelt, and Dwight Eisenhower out of pure interest, it's really because 1) they're short books with lots of pictures; 2) they can earn Accelerated Reader points from taking the quizzes; and 3) I'm bribing "incentivizing" them.

The big question is, who's going to reward me for finally finishing Stephen Ambrose's book on the Transcontinental Railroad?! Oh well. They have to be getting something out of all this, right?! Whatever it takes, we'll get there eventually...