Airplane - Survival of the Preparedest

In three days we will board a plane to make that seemingly endless trek across the pacific ocean for a month of vacation with family and friends.
I can hardly wait. I can hardly sleep at night. I'm on pins and needles in anticipation.

But behind it all, I'm also anxious. Nervous-anxious. Hesitant-anxious.

Not about landing in Texas and hugging nieces and nephews. No. Not anxious about that at all.
Absolutely.can't.wait. It's been 2 years since we've hugged their necks!

It's that 14 hour flight that has my stomach churning.

Perhaps because the last time we made that journey, it was wretched. Horrible. Scary. Miserable.

Really, after having a seizure on an airplane, we can only improve upon that. Surely there's no way it could be worse, right?
So in order to make sure that this time around it goes off without a hitch, I'm covering ALL my bases.

* I'm not pregnant this time around. CHECK

* There's not a Pappadeux in the Beijing airport to tempt me with coconut shrimp. CHECK

* And we're flying American Airlines, so wafts of Korean food will not be floating through the already stuffy air. CHECK

* We've basically quarantined our kids for the past week or so, so as to prevent any excessive germ-sharing. (Although...what are the odds...Eden still has a cough!)

On top of all that, I've totally gone out of my way for the past month to put together activities, games, and new toys for the kids to enjoy and to pass the time for 14 hours.
Granted, I spent a lot of time making, thinking, and prepping this stuff. But I figure after seizing on an airplane, I'm not without cause in my obsessive preparedness!



Pinterest has all sorts of ideas for keeping little ones busy in small spaces.

So for starters, I got stickers, new coloring pages, empty notebooks for drawing on and sticking stickers. I grabbed some cheapy toys at the local market that I don't give a rip about if they get lost.
I'm hoping that package of twistable crayons will be a huge hit. Neither Eden or Salem have ever used them, so I'm hoping that'll peak some curiosity for at least 10 minutes.

I picked up a box of 9 kuai bandaids (so that my children look like they've been through a cat fight by the time they stop off the plane) and a 5 kuai calculator for Caleb and his need to push buttons at all hours of the day. What can I say...living in the land of cheapy cheapables is totally a bonus for stocking up on things that you don't care if they get lost of broken!
A friend provided the pipe cleaners and pony beads for stringing and keeping fingers busy for awhile.

Not pictured is a dispenser of floss. I'm going to let Caleb go to town on pulling out every inch of it when it comes time to distracting him from throwing a fit.
And an empty baking powder container with a slit cut in the lid for him poking puff balls in and out of it. He loves those little puffy balls.

I picked up a couple of other ideas from other blogs...



Puzzle Popsicle Sticks. I made 2 or three for Eden and Salem each. And totally expecting Caleb to chew on them.



Rice bags!! This project was fun. Empty water bottles would have been easier than sewing bags. But I'm all about as little rattling and shaking noise as possible so as to not make the entire plane hate us by the time we get off. So, I sewed bags instead. There's a jillion blogs out there for instructions on making these.

And then the time consuming things were a couple projects that I wanted to do for the two bigs.



I'm not sure why I decided to attach ribbons as the closure for this cars "book." As now I realize that I'm going to have to be the one that ties it every time. oops...



The idea stemmed from here. There's printables, pictures, instructions. It's easy peasy. It just takes time.
(But did I mention that Brandon was gone for 10 days in the past month?! :)

But my favorite airplane activity is this one.



Again, the idea came from here. I added a few tweaks, and facial features, and made a book out of it rather than just a page by itself...



Felt is so incredibly cheap here, so if an eyeball or mustache gets lost in the abyss under airplane seats, I won't cry too hard.



I tried doing a mix of girly accessories, as well as boyish ones. (although the pirate is my fave!)
And added in a Rangers hat, because after all, we're headed to Texas!


The kids haven't seen any of this. And are clueless that I've even been working on it. So hopefully the surprise of it all will buy us some time as well. If not, at least I'll have fun decorating Mr. Potato Head.

And of course, if all else fails, we've downloaded new movies and new apps onto the iPad, and I'm doing my darndest to get Caleb hooked on Elmo. (to no avail)

So even if I do have another seizure an hour into this flight, Brandon WILL be prepared this go around!

Three days! Can't wait!!!