At least, that’s what my husband put as a joke on our itinerary for our upcoming trip to Australia. He thinks he’s funny.

Unfortunately, for this trip, it is pretty accurate. We are flying from Chicago to Sydney, which means that we really do get to spend basically a day in the air. Perhaps surprisingly, this will not be the longest trip our girls have taken in regards to total travel time – a few years back we went to Easter Island, which was 28 hours of total travel time. But this flight will represent the longest single flight they have taken. And to make matters worse, it is a well known secret that I hit my air time limit right around 12 hours. The flight will be 15 hours for the single leg from LAX to SYD. It’s going to be an adventure!

We need a way to keep two children busy for 15+ hours. As much as it pains me to say it, I wish that an iPad would suffice. It won’t. The one time I would allow my kids to watch as much TV as they want, they watch for 30 minutes before getting bored.

What about sleep, you ask? Yeah, well we learned on our first international trip that the girls will not sleep when you think they should. Rather, they fall asleep about 10 minutes before the flight lands and you are forced to carry them, along with all the luggage, through immigration, customs, and a seemingly never ending airport (and obviously, your plane arrives at the gate furthest away from everything).

Anyway, through our various trips we have discovered some tricks that work and keep the kids busy on flights. We have tried a number of different things and now humbly offer up some suggestions that have worked for us in the past.

• Tablets: love ’em or hate ’em, they are a godsend on long flights. Just make sure that you download media that the KIDS select, otherwise, it will be all for naught. 

• Crayons/Paper/Stickers: easy, small, time consuming. Pro-tip – either get triangle crayons or a crayon roll to make sure they aren’t constantly falling off the tray table. Here is a tutorial to make your own crayon roll, if you are so inclined. Which I am not. 

• Workbooks: what I like most about these is that they are cheap and offer a bunch of different activities from crosswords and word searches to math problems and mazes.

• Pipe cleaners: super cheap and light item. You can find instructions online to make all sorts of fun and interesting crafts. It will keep kids busy for hours.

• Magnetic games: like these!

Now, I have a whole list of things that didn’t work if you’d like those as well. When our kids were younger, we used to get a bunch of stuff at the dollar store or in the dollar section at Target. Then, we would just pull out a new toy when they got bored with the old one. It worked, for a little bit – 30 toys lasted about 20 minutes. But then we ended up with a bunch of crap that we didn’t need.

The key is to find things that your child finds interesting and will keep her busy. Otherwise, that job falls to you.