Great FREE Field Trip Idea. . .

This will be a quick entry as we are getting ready to leave for the weekend. . . we are celebrating Gregg's MBA graduation, WOO HOO! But, before we left, I wanted to post about our new favorite Field Trip idea!

Gregg's new job has him working half day Fridays EVERY WEEK! We are so loving this schedule! We try to plan outings at least two Fridays a month now with the girls, to get out of the house and have fun family quality time. Unfortunately, at the same time, we are working the Dave Ramsey plan pretty hardcore, and do not have tons of extra money just lying around. We need to be a bit creative on what we do for those outings. Our latest creative idea has gone over so well that the girls continue to ask to do it again, including while driving around this morning!!

The girls, like most children, LOVE animals. They love visiting family members who have pets, but for the season of life we are in right now, having a pet of our own is just not going to happen. But I am certainly not opposed to getting them around animals as much as possible. Going to the zoo, aquarium, petting zoo or farm would be one way to do this, but would definitely not fall into the "creative" money saving category. What we came up with one afternoon was a field trip to . . . A Pet Store!

We have a Petco about five minutes from our house and it is full of hampsters, rabbits, mice and rats, birds of all kinds, frogs, turtles, snakes, fish, guinea pigs, iguanas, ferrets and more! We stayed in the store for over an hour, and the girls would have gladly stayed longer! We followed that trip up with a trip to a nearby playground and a drive down to CiCi's Pizza next door where the girls ate free and we got the cheap buffet for ourselves. Six hours of quality fun family time, including food, for the total cost of about $10 with tax!

We will most certainly be recycling this idea again in the future! If you are wanting to get out of the house this summer with your little ones, but are either short on cash or dread the idea of being in the hot sun at the zoo for hours on end, maybe try out your local pet store . . . Hey, it works for us :-)

Have a WONDERFUL weekend!