When preparing for our road trip this summer I knew that I wanted to encourage the girls to keep a written record of their experiences. Past attempts at this have left us with mostly empty notebooks sitting on the floor of the back seat of the car. They just weren’t confident in knowing what to write and, I think, facing down an entire empty book was just plain intimidating.

I kept thinking about how to make it different and more successful this time. I played with a few ideas but kept coming back to this one: A Postcard Journal.

All along our journey the girls selected, purchased and wrote out their own postcards. They drew pictures, wrote down anecdotes of the day and dated and addressed each one. I packed with us a supply of postcard stamps and petty cash for them to use and we kept our eyes open for mailboxes on the route. We stopped at many little post offices and blue boxes in all sorts of interesting places as they mailed their memories home.

Not all my ideas are winners, but I was so very pleased with how this one turned out. The limited amount of space on each card meant that the girls didn’t feel overwhelmed with how much they should write. Mailing them home every day or two meant that we didn’t have to keep track of their journals among everything else in the car. And, maybe best of all, we were greeted by a big stack of postcards sitting in the front hall when we arrived home.

Today we went out and found albums and sorted the cards into chronological order as we filled the books. As we poured through them we were reminded of so many amazing places. It was a walk down memory lane that they can take time and time again.