(© Grace Lee, www.cutecolors.com)I've felt here, there and everywhere over the last couple of days, which explains my lack of posts. Why is it that a day begun with five 'must do' errands usually ends with ten new ones? :)
The pace is gearing up this week. My father-in-law could be dropping in for a short visit tomorrow (and if not tomorrow, then Monday), I have a Clean Up Day planned for Saturday, a classmate of Master J's and his mother over for an afternoon playing (and coffee for the grown ups) on Sunday and an uncle-in-law popping in for a visit either on Tuesday or Wednesday. Phew!
Tomorrow all three of The Piglets have the day off from school. Tomorrow marks the opening day of my city's Royal Show (kind of like a massive fair, with sideshows, rides, animals, demonstrations in the main arena, fireworks, the whole shebang - and opening weekend usually brings in crowds of up to 100,000 a day if the weather is warm, and the full 9 days usually go well in excess of a million). It's big enough that most schools pick a day during the 9 days of the Show and designate it as a school closure day, hopefully in order that students go on that day rather than having 100 kids away on any of the other given days of that week. Boofah and Miss Moo's school has chosen Opening Day as their closure day, and Master J's school's day is Monday, but co-incidentally, Master J also has a regular ol' student free day tomorrow as well (making it a four day weekend for him, lucky thing). Unfortunately, Hubs is working tomorrow and Monday so we won't be going to The Show on those days (we'd avoid it anyway, Opening Day is chaos with the crowds) but we may still give the kids the day off school on another of the days or even go after school (it is open until 9pm each night). But we haven't yet decided if we'll go at all this year - retrospectively, having a Financial Spring Clean during September perhaps wasn't the best idea, LOL. Ticket prices for our family of five usually sit around $45 and that's before the rides and showbags. We never overspend when we do go, and we take our own food and drinks in, but even so, entry, one ride apiece (our limit - stops the fights!) and parking easily costs us $60. There's a lot of free entertainment to be had for that, but still - this is supposed to be a 'careful' month, so we'll see. The kids have their own spending money for the first time this year via pocket money, so each of them have a little bit extra that they're allowed to spend as they see fit, if we do decide to go.
But anyhow, that leaves us with a bonus day at home tomorrow. I had originally been planning to take all three kids out for the day on the bus, catch a movie in the cinema, have lunch and so on. We may only have two days in the school year where all three (two different schools) are off on the same day, so we've always tried to do something special. For obvious reasons though, an expensive day like this is out. So we're probably staying at home for the day. Daddy will be getting ready for afternoon shift around 1:30pm.
I need your input. What sorts of activities could I plan to make the day special tomorrow, without spending a lot of money? I have some ideas but would love some more, so leave a comment. Within walking distance we have a small library and a small shopping centre, so I was thinking at the very least an hour picking out new books, with maybe a Subway cookie as a treat (3 for $2). If we do that on opening (10am), we can come home and have a Cinema-at-Home Day with (free) DVDs picked up while we were there. We've done this before, with a blanket spread on the loungeroom floor and microwave popcorn (eating anywhere other than the (tiled) family room/kitchen is a total no-no, so this is strangely exciting to them all on its own, LOL).
Then Saturday sees us doing a big household clean up. The kids tend to grumble about things like this, so I'm trying to come up with ways to enlist their help but to put a positive spin on it. My kids are generally pretty good with their daily chores (they have charts on the fridge) but not so good with the 'special clean ups' - we're working on it. I'm thinking of printing out a list of 'extra' chores and the 'price' per chore in ticks. A certain number of ticks can be exchanged for a certain extra special reward - like 10 ticks for extra computer time, 20 to stay up an extra half hour at bedtime, and so on. It wouldn't be a system for every day (simple 'this is what you're responsible for as a member of the family' chore charts work better for us) but it might be useful to have on hand for the Clean Up Days. Toward the end of Saturday, Master J (and probably the other two as well) and I are going to bake a couple of things for his friend's visit the next day.
Hope everyone is having a wonderful day!
Cheers,
Lizzie
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