7 people, 5 days, 900 miles

The boys and I leave tomorrow morning for a trip to Virginia.  We are visiting Aaron, Beth and the kids.  We finally get to meet our newest family member...Benedict James who is 8 weeks old.  And I can't wait to see all the cousins play together. We haven't seen them since October and the littlest cousins are a considerably older and my boys are looking forward to seeing their cousins.

I am excited to try out the new van on a long trip.  It will be so nice to have some extra room this time and not be so smashed in there that no one can move.  I actually have room to pack more than 3 outfits per person.  So the big question came down to...how do I pack for 7 people for a 5 day trip while packing what we need without taking up too much space.  Brad has to stay home and work; we are all very sad.  So it will be the 6 kids and me.

I have all of these great Thirty-One Gifts products now that I use all the time on a daily basis and I thought it would be fun to pack in them for the trip.  So here is how to pack for 7 people for a 5 day trip that will include 900 miles of driving.

I packed all 5 boys in two of the Large Utility Totes.  Each boy has 5 outfits, pajamas, socks, underwear, and a church outfit.  I then packed Veronica in a smaller Organizing Utility Tote and myself in a City Weekender with room left for the toiletry bag.  Now since the van is HUGE and I don't want to have to either pull over when someone wants something or needs a new toy/game/book I gave each seat an Organizing Utility Tote that the kids filled with what they wanted for the drive.  They had so much fun and all the outside pockets were great for their little cars, etc.

I forgot, I packed all of the "sleeping" blankets (those the kids love to sleep with) and stuffed animals in the larger Expand-A-Tote Day Extender.  Everything fit perfectly and now I don't have a zillion stuff animals and blankets floating around the van.

Then came food.  Not only food for the drive, but food for the stay in Virginia.  I don't want to stop and eat because trying to feed 6 kids at McDonalds is way too expensive.  So I decided we would pack everything we would eat for the day in thermal totes.  Again, like the toys, I didn't want to stop every time someone was hungry, so I took the same approach to food as I did to toys/books.  I gave each seat their own thermal tote.  Parker and Matthias are in the back together so they are getting the Picnic Thermal, Augustin is getting the pink (yes it's very girly, but was all I had) Thermal lunch Tote and Samuel since he sits up front and I can keep most of his food for him, gets the smallest thermal.  Then Grant and I will have the huge Market Thermal for ourselves which will also have the gallon of milk and all extra cold food.  I then packed all food for the stay in VA in another Large Utility Tote and a Storage Tote.  Perfect.

And my current "don't leave home without it" bag is my Cindy Tote which will hold all of my personal stuff...wallet, calendar, phone, iPod and of course the laptop.  I use it as my purse normally so we'll just add a few things to it.

So that is how to pack for 7 people for a 5 day trip where there will be about 22 hours spent driving.  Everything is organized and everyone will have what they need both in Virginia and in the van.