Monday, May 25, 2009

cheap entertainment

On Friday afternoon, Ryan surprised us by coming home a little earlier than expected. And, since it was the beginning of a 3-day weekend, we thought we'd make the most of it and do something fun for the evening. Ryan really wanted to go to Fry's Electronics to check out their sale, so I willingly gave in as long as beforehand, we could go to the Wilsonville Family Fun Center with the kids.

Since Mikayla and Austin are both at the age that pretty much anything we do is fun and exciting to them, we decided to let them just run around a little in the tiny tot area of the fun center "pretending" they were actually playing the games. However, we aren't that cheap, so we did end up giving them each 3 tokens to "spend" as they (we) pleased ($2.00).

Afterwords we walked around outside watching the bumper boats, but with Mikayla's dislike of being wet with her clothes on, we opted for not riding on them. We were going to spend a quarter to spray the riders, but they were spraying our way, too, so we stayed far enough away.


We also opted not to ride the go carts since it was like $7 for one run (+$3 for passenger)! I think we'll save this for a more special ocassion. They were content just watching.


After all of the fun, we loaded up in the car and headed to McDonald's to let the kids play on their playground while Ryan made his Fry's trip. The kids shared some french fries and burger while I sipped away on a Diet Coke enjoying the sun. It took Mikayla about 20 minutes to gain enough guts to go down one of the slides. She was "stuck" in one of the sections and afraid of a slight drop in the structure or something like that. I was *this close* to humiliating myself by having to go up inside the play structure to coax her down, but thankfully there was a sweet little boy who showed her how to do it and down the slide she came. Of course, after she finally figured it out she didn't want to leave. Isn't that how it always works?! It was a fun {cheap} night.

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We just got back tonight from a quick 2-day trip to visit friends. It was a fun time with little sleep, so I'm off to bed a little early(ier). Pics to come soon!

15 comments:

Kelli said...

Jamison doesn't like for her clothes to be wet either. So funny. Looks like a fun time had by all.

Shawn said...

Lucky girl, my kids are never happy unless Mommy & Daddy drop and fist full of money!

Kelli W said...

Sounds like a fun time...and getting out only spending $2 is amazing!! I think every kid gets "stuck" in the slide at least once in their life...and only the lucky moms manage to get them out without that embarrassing trip to the top!!

Missy said...

Sounds like a fun time! So, you got away with only spending $2. That's my kind of fun!

Rhonda said...

Hey Heidi,
I have had to crawl up one of those things to drag my child down! Ugh!

Sounds like a fun time! No you don't have to spend a lot of money to have fun!

Hey, I think I told you I received my craft it forward fun stuff and loved it! Now I am trying to figure out what I am going to be sending. I should have thought of it more ahead of time, huh. I have 3 or 4 ideas swimming in my head. I will have to nail it down before I post your goodies and my post.

Amanda said...

I think it's wonderful you all spent quality time together w/o spending much money at all!

Blessings,
Amanda

Emily said...

Definitely sounds like a fun day...and just goes to show that you don't need to spend a lot to have a lot of fun! Melody got stuck at the playplace at the Chick once and I had to suffer the humiliation of getting her down. 7 months pregnant. Wearing a skirt. Thankfully the playplace was full of other homes who hopefully empathized with me!

He & Me + 3 said...

I love doing free and inexpensive things and usually those are the times we have the best time together. Funny how that works huh?

It Feels Like Chaos said...

For a long time my oldest didn't actually want me to turn on rides at Chuck E. Cheese and other similar places he just like to pretend to drive; it was so awesome how he'd be entertained for an hour for free while other kids would blow through tokens. Oh, I've done the climb into McDonalds Playland on more than one occasion -- not fun because I get very claustrophobic up there!

Xazmin said...

Looks like a great time! Entertainment can get so expensive if you're not careful!

Jennifer W. said...

Sounds like a great time! And don't you just love when you can do stuff cheap??
Jen

Kasey said...

Sounds like a great time! Isn't it funny how different kids are? I mean my son is usually climbing up the outside of the slide and the one that is so fearless that I'm scared to death! and here you are worried your going to have to climb in because she was worried to come down! they need to meet in the middle I think!

Dawn said...

Sounds like you had a great weekend! Glad you had fun. My least favorite thing to do is crawl in those tunnels. I had to do it alot with my oldest but now my two oldest take the younger ones up for me. Have a great week!

Lyndsie Miles said...

That's what we love to do! I love the age where entertainment is cheap.

Our ultimate favorite outing is a picnic in the park.

I'm glad you had so much fun!

Miller Racing Family said...

What a wonderful night. Don't you love the little play areas. Trey could spend hours there and thankfully he still is pleased with all of the free stuff so we are thankful. Glad to hear you guys had a great three day weekend. Sorry I am so late on commenting this week.

 
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