DEAD THING!!!

I read an article about traveling with kids a while ago, and to be honest I thought most of it was the usual molly-codling nonsense that is spewed these days by people who are afraid to tell their child "No" for fear that it will somehow harm the child. (Wow, that's quite a sentence.) Well, it's worse to let a child grow up thinking it is entitled to whatever it wants. There was one thing I agreed on...Anyway, back to traveling.

We have a vehicle that is big enough for us, and then some. Even so, on longer trips and sometimes just going to the store, the car seems mighty small. We've driven through several states in one day, with the bag of books and stuff to keep the kids entertained - but I will NEVER have a DVD player in my car. Look out of the window for crying out loud.

One day in the car the boys were bickering and just wouldn't stop. We live in an area with a lot of wildlife, and the animals don't always make it across the road. The guys were arguing back and forth over some piddly kid stuff making me crazy, I'm grinding my teeth, trying not turn around and scream at them when I see salvation squished on the road. "Look kids: DEAD THING!"

Yep, what worked for the woman who wrote the article worked for me, too. The boys were too busy looking for the dead possum to argue anymore. Then I had them figure out what animal it was.