Our two week adventure!!

Packing for a long journey across the planet is not that easy with little ones, if its not planned well. How you plan your journey can really define what type of memories you will have (fond ones or ones you want to forget). Previously I had posted about somethings to keep with you on a road trip to keep the children occupied. However when traveling by plane you cannot do the same (can't carry too much luggage). Alhumdullillah, I am starting to get use to traveling and on every trip learn new things to do in order to have a smooth journey.

InshaAllah in this post I will be sharing with you my travel kit secrets. You can pack the material I will be mentioning for any short or long, road, air or track trips. These are some essentials that I have to have when travelling with my family.

Secret #1 

• Always travel with a Diaper-Backpack. Reason for that is:
• it gives you two free hands to handle your kids
• lots space for baby stuff.
• weight is appropriately divided on 2 shoulders
• its not like diaper bags which keep falling off your shoulder! or hit people in their face with it!
• look for a backpack with side pockets or baby bottles and sippers 
• One thing to remember with backpacks is that NEVER keep any important belongings in the front pockets! They can be easily stolen! 

Secret #2 

  Homeopathy Travel kit

• I always pack first-aid remedy kit in small zip-locks with labels. The reason why I prefer zip-locks when traveling is because they are light weight and don't take much space. 

    Essential Remedies

1. Aconite 30
2. Chamomile 30
3. Ferrrum Phosphorus 6x
4. Gelsimium 30
5. Nux Vomica 30
6. Carbo Vegetabilis 30
7. Arnica Montana 30
8. Kali Mur 6x
9. Aloe 30
10. Calendula tincture ointment
11. Rhus Tox 30
12. Lycopodium 30

Aromatherapy -->Essential oils kit

• Since we can no longer carry liquid in hand carrys. I pack most of them in the luggage. I have  taken two essential oil in a ziplock and the airport officials were fine with it. One other thing I did was, I soaked a cotton ball with the essential oil and zipped it! This way I had the oil and it didn't bother the aiport immigration.

   Essential oils

1. Lavender oil
• Known for its relaxing properties (works great for jet lag), protects from flu and cold, its also antiseptic so you can apply to small cuts and wounds. I also keep a small bag with dried lavender flowers in the backpack.
2. Tea tree oil 
• Very powerful antiseptic and immune stimulator. Its known to be great for cough, cold sores, infected wounds, cuts, and insect
3. Lemon grass oil
• Great refresher and air purifier, also great for headaches.
4. Eucalyptus oil
• Useful for muscular pains, insect bites and  insect repellent.
5. Sandalwood oil
• Good for sore throats, earaches and cough with mucus.

Secret #3

Suprises

• Kids love suprises! I wrapped some small toys for them to keep them busy. 

These were some small toys, that I had packed. The kids loved opening them! The new toy kept them busy for a while through out the trip. 

This was one thing we got that AR simply loved, because he really likes animals (its also a great learning tool for toddlers and preschoolers)

Few things I learned from this trip:

• Stroller review! We have this 'sit and stand' stroller which we simply LOVE, however it's not a travel friendly stroller with 2 little ones. It serves us great for local use, but not for touring. 
• We were thinking AR was old enough for not having a blanket to travel with but, a lot of times he was really cold and asked for an blanket!

Alhumdulillah the last few weeks of traveling have been very adventures and fun! We got to stay in Riyad and meet the new addition of our family and then we head off to London, England, where we met up with my in-laws. We all had a great time, it was a fun family reunioun. Although our stay in London was short but we still had loads of fun! (I will be posting about our London adventures). One thing I absoutly hated was the subway rides and the fact that there was almost no wheelchair/stroller accessibility!! Which meant carrying the stroller up and down the stairs with 2 kids.

Once we got to Canada we also got to attend the Journey of Faith conference, which was a very much needed spirit revivier. It was also nice because we got to meet most of our friends. Although I have to say the jet lag and the over tired kids were a bit of a challenge but it was still worth it. After the 2 weeks of on going action we took the whole Monday off to relax!

MashaAllah! I have to applaud my kiddies for their patience throughout the long trip. They did get irritable at points but mostly the stood strong though the trip, Alhumdulillah!