It's the stuff movies are made of. Everyone piled into the family station wagon with the optimistic notion of seeing new sights and spending time together without the daily distractions and preferred electronic devices to turn to. However, if your family is anything like mine, after about an hour, the snacks are gone -- isn't it amazing how hungry you get when you start a drive? -- and the "When are we going to be there?" begins.

Since you know this scenario is inevitable, don't fight it. Simply prepare for the vortex of boredom the same way you would pack your guide books, water, and extra clothes. If you have a range of games at your disposal -- some short term, some that can last for days -- you will all make it out of the car in one piece.

Here are a few options to keep everyone engaged and amused until you get to your next destination.

Video games are as much a part of modern kid-dom as peanut butter and jelly. Just about anywhere you go, you're bound to see a kid or three gathered around a little box with a screen jabbering on about mushrooms or racers or some such gibberish (to you anyway). Any guesses what you're seeing there?

Communication. Aka, social skills. Aka, video game play is no longer relegated to that loner kid in his mom's basement. In fact, if you've got a shy kid who needs to be brought out of his shell, you might want to invest in a game console. Behold the wonder of what it can do:

I'm not going to lie to you all and tell you that I was always punctual, but becoming a parent has put a whole new spin on my excuses for being late to meetings, lunches, parties, and appointments.

Back in the day, I was late because of normal stuff, you know, my hair didn't look just right, my alarm clock didn't go off, there was traffic on 95. When my kids were babies, it was explosive diarrhea, Exorcist-style spit-ups, and tantrums that all seemed to happen within moments of us leaving.

Now, between me barely keeping my head on straight and my kids being out of their minds, it's excuses like this:

Sorry I'm late but ...

About a year ago I wrote a mother-in-law-nup (MIL-nup), so that one could comfortably hand their sweet boy over to some son-stealing Jezebel. Clearly, I'm still bitter, but it made me realize that there should be "nups" for lots of things.

Like email and social networking. I'm not talking about the spammers who seem quite certain I have a small penis, I'm lonely, I could use Prozac and Cialis, and I should get said drugs from Canada.

No, I can forgive the Internets, but what I cannot forgive is the annoying emails and Facebook requests from my supposed friends and family. You guys are on shaky ground, which is why I've written this "e-nup," and I say everyone signs!

I hereby decree that:

Once you survive the newborn months of baby not sleeping through the night because of the reality that they are babies who need to eat every two to three hours, you see this beacon of sleep light in the toddler years. But sometimes that doesn't happen either. There are the wake-ups and the crawling into bed with you or even you ending up squished into the princess-themed twin sheets along with your child and 47 favorite stuffed animals, feet cold from dangling off the end, arm asleep from lying on it, and not wanting to move for fear of waking your child who finally snoozed. Why is this happening, you wonder? This no sleep business. Why can't my child sleep through the night?

The answer has everything to do with technology.

After writing a recent post on things I'd never know if I weren't a Gen Xer, I came to realize that I'm some kind of Generation X genius. I mean, I could be the "Rain Man" of the Gen X set. Seriously, throw some quotes on the floor, I'll tell you who said them. OK, that test may not work as well as it does with toothpicks in the movie.

But I now see that I'm somewhat stuck in the '80s, and I kinda like it there. So I thought I'd share some of the most random stuff I remember as a Gen X poster child.

Let's say you've got a kid -- or know a kid -- who looooooves video games. (I know, don't they all?) That's cool, but it makes buying holiday gifts something of a challenge: There are only so many must-have video games on the shelves, after all. What ELSE can you give a video game-obsessed kid ... besides, well, video games?

Luckily there are lots of options out there, from actual video game accessories to video game-inspired t-shirts to gadgets that aren't games but are still techy enough to satisfy the digital beast.

Here are a few of our favorites:

Gender issues weren't really a concern when I played Zelda back in the day. Link, the main character in the classic Nintendo game, was just a blob on the screen with a sword and a shield -- Link was more an "it" than a "he" or a "she." But these days, with all dem der fancy technological advances, it's evident on the new Zelda games (as I'm learning) that Link is a boy. He's a he, and one dad isn't thrilled about.

After Mike Hoye tried fruitlessly to change the pronouns on the screen from male to female to help his daughter visualize herself as the heroic Link, he did what only awesome, feminist dads would do: he hacked into Zelda and made Link a girl.