Monday, July 6, 2009

Updates

We received a few more postcards since my last post. As of today, we have our first card from Asia! My husband has a coworker who went to India, he sent the kids a beautiful card. A great big thank you again to everyone who has participated. We have 3 continents down, 3 more to go. I really hope that we are able to get at least one card from Africa, South America and Australia.

Fourth of July weekend turned out to be a blast! Not to mention very cheap and frugal. We drove to my parent's home in Minnesota to celebrate. Because we live 300 miles away, we had to budget for the cost of fuel this weekend, in addition to one meal on the road. Regretfully, I did not think ahead and make a picnic lunch to eat on the drive there. Of course, for the return trip, my mom packed us a lunch. Thanks mom, we were are all very grateful for the tasty meal.

Fourth of July has always been a cheap holiday for us, this year proved to be no different. We attended the obligatory 4th of July parade on Saturday morning. As always, candy and prizes were thrown to the children in the crowd. This year, however, brought a surprise that we never expected. Because we were in suburban Minneapolis, Mall of America had a representative handing out mystery tickets to excited children. At the very least, the kids would get a ticket for a free ride. The best case scenario was unlimited rides for a year or a day's worth of rides. My mom and I decided to utilize the five tickets we had, buy an extra ticket if need be and let the kids go on 2 rides each. As it turned out, we made a good decision to make that extra trip to the mall. Of course, the first 4 tickets we were given had the equivalent of 1 good ride or 2 kiddie rides. It wasn't until I took my youngest to the Ferris wheel for our final ride that we found we had scored the jackpot. The last ticket in our pile had 100 points! A value of over $100.00. Our 4th of July afternoon was set. With 3 very excited children, and a grandma who really wanted to go on the log ride, we took full advantage of our unexpected bounty. For the next 2 hours we went on every ride we had wanted to go on (but too cheap to pay for) and had a truly fantastic time. All for free. Talk about frugality at work.

My parents made a great 4th of July dinner, cake included to celebrate my youngest daughter's birthday this week. We ended the evening with another free 4th activity, fireworks. It was a great weekend. The total lost for this weekend was $78.75, the cost of the fuel and McDonald's. Thanks mom and dad for a great time.

Today was a stay at home day. We have a big blow up pool for the kids. I had 8 kids here today (my own 3 included in that total)playing in the pool, running around, playing in the yard. Doing typical kid summer stuff, of course all for free. Watching my kids play today, made me realize how little kids need to be truly happy. My kids just needed some sunshine, good friends, fun activities, ice cream and kool aid to have a really good time. Grand total for today, probably pennies.

Two more months of summer and I am still enjoying having them home. I have not started counting down the days to the start of school, in fact, I don't know when the first day of school is. I am hopeful that we will continue to have such a fun and busy summer, void of "I am bored", which I have not heard yet.

I am going to start July with another attempt at getting control of our grocery budget. Yesterday, my husband spent $8.00 for groceries. Today, I spent $105.39. Our grand total so far for the month is $113.39. Since it is July 6th, I am hoping that we can get away with spending $400.00 on groceries this month. I am pretty sure that number is unrealistic, but who knows, maybe we can get away with it.

I am signing off now. Looking forward to reading The Giver tonight. My son and I are reading it for a book discussion later this week.

1 comment:

  1. I am so glad you had a good time. Dad and I did too.

    ReplyDelete