Staycation Adventures

Earlier this school year, I had the opportunity to chair the National Reflections Program through the PTA at Ellis Elementary. It was a lot of work, but thankfully I had a few great helpers. Laurie, one of my helpers, arranged prizes for students who entered the art contest. Laurie may have contacted every business institution in town, as she loaded up the students with "free" this and "free" that coupons to last a lifetime, which for our family, came multiplied by two.

Since December, Aspen and Liberty had been dying to use their free goods coupons. During the week of Spring Break we decided to have a staycation and spend the whole week using up all our coupons. There were daily visits to the pool using one of our week long family memberships to a local gym, free cookies, free ice cream cones, free bananas, free classes, free kids meals (at nearly every restaurant on Main Street). You name it, we did it. The only thing we had previously used were the two buy one get one free ice skating passes, so we had a free fun filled week. On our last day, we turned in the final free coupons and went bowling.

Among the highlights for me, which included winning with three strikes (thanks mom for passing on your awesome bowling skills!), was seeing all my favorite feet decked out in neon split-colored shoes. Had to snap a picture.

Abbie had a hay day spinning herself crazy on bar stool chairs, searching each ball rack for a "pink one", and celebrating the miracle of her ball making its way back to our lane rack via the speedy underground tunnel.  "Whoa!", she'd say.

Liberty enjoyed pushing her ball slowly down the greasy floor, making sure to cross the line and achieve a beeping line violation nearly 90 percent of her releases. She rarely saw a ball make it to the pins, nor had a care in the world if the two collided or not (as evident in her turned body, big smile and still moving ball in the below photo).

After getting over being mad that we didn't go swimming for the 6th time that week (mom was water logged!), Aspen smiled a few times in her hunt for a strike while trying out the ball releasing gadget and gutter bumpers.

Mick got sick of his fingers getting stuck in every ball he used in his pursuit to beat me, and chasing Abbie around the ball racks.

Good times, good times! After "free bowling" for two, bowling for three and shoes for five, $25.00 was our most expensive activity of the staycation but a fun family first.