It has been a FULL day of packing for the lake! I thought I’d give you a breakdown of what we all bring along and set up for a trip such as this.
Before I tell you what we packed, I’ll tell you what I prepped.
In advance, I made three batches of pizza rolls and three batches of granola bars. I chopped up a ton of vegetables and pitted two pounds of cherries. That felt like an accomplishment all on its own!
Now to packing 🙂
Every single person in our family brought at least seven short sleeved shirts, two long sleeved shirts, two hoodies, jeans, two pairs of shorts, swimwear, sweats and sweat shorts, seven pairs of underwear and socks, a jacket, shoes, sandals, rubber boots, and a hat. Of course, the girls have some leggings, dresses, rompers, etc. as well. So that right there is a decent amount of stuff! I save myself a bunch of time by leaving everything on hangers and laying them in big industrial tubs. That way, I can just pull everything out and hang it up once we get to the lake, and there’s no folding and no mess. We easily got all five kids clothes into one big tub! Their stuffed toys fit in there, as well. Win! Brady and I have a similar packing list for clothing, obviously. We also bring our bedding, because we’re high maintenance like that. Besides our bedding, we’re bringing two fold-out mattresses, two sleeping bags, and a playpen for Waverly. Bringing those things makes it EASY for us to all comfortably fit. We could do this stay without the extras but this makes it so much more comfortable! And we’re already bringing basically everything we own, so why not?
Toiletries are big, too. Everyone brings a toothbrush, obviously, and we have a pretty wicked of “just in case” medicine, including all ages of Advil, Tylenol, and Benadryl. We have tons of bug spray, sun screen, and After-Bite. We have ample amounts of bandaids and all that goes with them. We’re *hopefully* ready for anything! On top of those things, we have obvious toiletries, like some makeup, hair stuff, moisturizer, etc. Just basics, though.
Kitchen stuff is always the biggest part of packing. We bring most of our own food, and while the kitchenette is “full,” it doesn’t always work for a group our size. So we have packed our biggest pot and biggest frying pan. We brought our own knives, and a big stack of paper plates and solo cups. We have a lot of groceries to pack and bring, but I actually feel pretty good about how little of that we can pack the day ahead of time! Makes me feel like a bit more of our food is “real food” this time around, haha! We do currently have chips, crackers, and a few other little things packed, but there’s much more to go! We’ll buy milk and bread there. No business trying to keep that much milk in a cooler, or to have our buns and bread get massacred in the van. We packed coffee, creamers, and filters. Because priorities. Travel mugs, too! Didn’t bring those last year, and definitely should have. We also bring black garbage bags, white garbage bags, grocery bags, ziploc bags, back clips, etc. It seems excessive but you’d be amazed at how much we use!
We brought a HUGE stack of coloring pages, courtesy of my mom, as well as workbooks, crayons, and pencil crayons. We still need to pack up the Duplo, some books, and some little Waverly toys. We packed Skip-Bo, Phase 10, and tile rummy. We downloaded some movies off of iTunes and Netflix as well, just in case of rainy days, which the forecast has promised to us 😉 We will be aaaaall entertained. Lucky for us, we’re not afraid of getting out in the rain either, and have some big water squirty toys that I hope we get the chance to crack out!
Currently, the laptop is backing up, so its at its best for our trip. Camera batteries are charged, all charger cables/bricks are on the list to pack tomorrow, and I even wiped just about all the pictures/videos off my phone. I am READY to make memories, and hopefully record a couple of them.
Quick! What am I forgetting?