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Consistency is a key factor !

Give yourself plenty of time for the routine! I think starting an hour before we actually want the kids to be asleep has worked best for our family.

Marco Polo is always the first game I think of to play at the pool! Whoever is "it" closes their eyes and wanders around the pool trying to tag the other players. Anytime the person who is "it" says "Marco?" the other players have to respond "Polo!"

Keepy Uppy is an equally fun game to play in the pool as it is out of the pool! Just keep a beach ball (or two or three) up in the air as long as possible.

I bought peepee teepees and used one once. Receiving blankets. Used maybe once or twice. Baby nail file! As much as I have to admit it...just get clippers and suck up the fear of cutting their nails. The files don’t work very well.

Blankets, quilts. Used swaddling blankets only.

Annie! A classic for the whole family, always. Kids were 7 and 9 when we saw it, and we were coming out of an obsession with the movies, which made it extra fun!

I love the stage version of Beauty and the Beast! It's just similar enough to the familiar Disney movie for kids to understand everything, but just different enough to keep it fresh. The extra songs are some of my favorites.....and there's nothing like the magic of watching the beast turn into a prince right before your eyes!

What did the shark say when it ate the clown fish? Tastes funny.

Why does a duck have feathers? To cover his butt quack

There's a haunted house cookie kit at Trader Joe's that is really fun for kids to make their own gingerbread-style creation. Or you can DIY with graham crackers, orange and black squeeze frosting, candy corn, etc.

There are so many great Halloween movies for kids, you can easily pick a new one each week for a whole month of spooky family movie nights. Lean into the theme by mixing some candy into your popcorn.

If there are six apples and you take away four, how many apples do you have? Four.

The more you take away from me, the bigger I get. What am I? A hole.

Goldfish crackers, of course! They will almost certainly get all over your car, but IMO are still worth it for the ease and universal kid appeal.

Granola bars are so easy to travel with, and are a hearty road trip snack that still tastes like a treat.

Sharks and minnows is fun, and it gets played a lot at school. Players stand along a starting line, and must reach the finish line without being tagged by the shark. Any minnows who are tagged by the shark become sharks, too. Repeat racing across until all remaining minnows have been tagged. The winner is the last minnow to be tagged.

Hide and seek is one of the best childhood games for kindergartners or preschoolers to play with bigger siblings! The person who is "it" covers her eyes and counts while the other players hide. The seeker must find all of the other players, and the last one to be found becomes the new seeker. You can play variations where the seeker must tag the other players, or where there is a home base that the hiders need to reach to become safe.

Though dining out is part of the travel experience and something to embrace, we never fail to make a quick grocery store run on day 1 of the trip, especially for breakfast items so we can wake up and casually eat at "home": cereal, milk, bagels, fruit, coffee, etc. This is less expensive (and less time consuming) than eating out every single morning.

Join the Association of Children’s Museums (ACM) reciprocal network. Register with a flat yearly fee at your local children's museum (it pays itself off very fast!) and you'll receive 50% off at sooo many children's museums nationwide. (You'll earn free membership at your local museum, too.) Where are you headed? Find a children's museum in the ACM network here: https://findachildrensmuseum.org/