Road Trip Prep

I am slowly, slowly getting prepared for our road trip to Colorado next week. Everything I read about traveling with little ones urges lots of planning and taking breaks.... the only problem with this  advice is that I am not in charge of this trip! We are going to a family reunion and are traveling with my sister-in-law and her family. She and my husband want to drive straight through 1400 miles to get from our home in Washington State to Denver. Basically only stopping to pee and eat. According to Google, this trip should take 21 hours non-stop.
According to them, they think it's going to take 24 hours.
According to me, I think it will take almost 30 hours.
We'll see who wins.

Anyway.... I am planning as best as I can. We are leaving in the evening, hoping that the children will all sleep during the night. I'm not even sure if we're going to stop often enough for me to nurse the baby. Sooo... in preparation of that possible scenario, I've packed my breast pump and battery pack and car bottle warmer. We've introduced the bottle to Zachary and so I'll be bringing bottles and all that stuff with us. At least I can sit in the back and give him a bottle, if nothing else.

I've also planned a bunch of "surprise bags" for Malachi. This is something I found in multiple posts and pinned on Pinterest. I'm modifying it just a little for my purposes, but I'm hoping it will work! This is my basket of "goodies" at the moment. I am planning on half little $1 type toys and half small snacks or candies. 
In our toys are things like:

• Hot Wheels cars
• Pipe cleaners
• Plastic insects
• Cars Kalidascope
• Cars Squinkies
• Stickers
• Pull back Trains
• Dinosaur
• Wind up airplane with track

In my special snacks and candies we have:

• Ring pop
• Percy the train Pez dispenser
• Candy necklace
• Fruit strip
• Peanut butter and cracker sandwiches
• Bag of cranberry granola
• Some candy with a grabber on the end (dual purpose! candy AND toy!)

I came across some other great ideas, like crayons and coloring books, white boards with dry erase markers, etch-a-sketch, and other such drawing/creative activities. Unfortunately, I know from experience at home that these things don't interest him at the moment. And they only interest him if you do it with him. My goal in most of my toys was that it was all stuff he could (and would) do on his own in the back seat.

I think I have all my toys purchased, and I just have a few snacks left. Of course I've purchased a ton of snacks for the trip, but these are special types that he normally doesn't have. I'm planning on having two of those little plastic baskets above - one with wrapped toys and one with wrapped snacks. Every hour or so, I will alternate which basket he can choose something from. I've planned on about 30 things total to get us through both legs of the trip.... I'm counting on sleep taking up a significant portion of the drive!

My mom purchased one of these Star Kids Snack and Play Travel Tray's for us from Amazon and I'm pretty excited about it! I think it will make playing in the car so much easier!

And of course, don't forget the rest stop toys! Last year on our trip to Bend, OR (which was only a 1 day drive), I was so happy I'd brought stuff to do when we stopped. Bring a ball or two, frisbees, bubbles or anything else you could fit in your car! We're not going to have a lot of extra room this trip, so that may be about it, but it's enough for something to do when you get out to help burn off some energy!

Today we are getting Malachi a haircut and hopefully starting on some house cleaning... I don't want to come back to a dirty house!