Friday, January 29, 2010

Family Time on a Budget

We get very little family time.  Between G-man working nights and weekends, my schedule, school....it is rare that we are all home. The kids had a teacher workday today, so no school.  Friday is my and G-man's regular day off, so we decided that we HAD to do something more than sit around the house.  We had a couple of ideas, and none really panned out for one reason or another.  Then my hubby came up with a good idea....I added in my budget spin, and VOILA!

He mentioned the natural history museum about 30 min away.  We had never been there, and with a dinosaur boy, and a nature loving girl...sounded like a brilliant plan.  I checked the website....$7 per adult, $5 per kid, plus $3 parking.  So, we were at $27.  Not horrible...not great.

Enter my budgetary mind.....the local library has passes you can borrow for discounts!!!  (I was actually surprised....they had about 20 museums to choose from.)   So we swung by the library, and with the swipe of my library card, I got the pass....good for $5 off PER PERSON, up to 4 people.  That is $20!!  So our $27 just went down to $7!!!

Great museum....we plan on going back without the kids so we can really take the time to read everything.  They had a HUGE dinosaur room with a gorgeous mural and a cool interactive video thing.  This room led into the mammal room, the "human" room, and lots of Native American stuff.  Upstairs, the discovery room let you handle all sorts of rocks, fossils, plants.  The Egypt room was beautiful, and the the bird room could have scared Alfred Hitchcock with the number of specimen.

But by far, I think we loved the mineral, gem, and rock room.  BEAUTIFUL.  They had a diamond in the shape of a Buddha.  I want one!!

So, a day of family fun....educational....and cheap.  Definitely a hit!

5 comments:

  1. That is awesome! I'm going to have to check with our local library -- I had never heard of getting museum discounts before.

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  2. I had no idea you could get stuff like that at the library! Very impressive frugalista behavior!

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  3. Sounds like a great day - and an awesome use of library resources. Well done on finding a way to have fun and stay on budget.

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  4. Great job. Way to check for the discounts. I love saving money

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  5. I will have to see if our library does something similar. What a great idea! Finding things to do for family time can be tricky on a budget. We're lucky and have a two-dollar movie theater in town, and my kids get free kids meal coupons from school fairly often.

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