The other day I asked our daughter if she’d make me a list of things she wants to do this summer. I think she gets the whole ‘loving to make lists’ thing from me. 😉
She made me up a list and I thought I’d share it with y’all. She’s 8 and still working on spelling, so I fixed those errors for easier reading. Most of the things she wants to do are either free or cheap—guess I’m rubbing off on her.
1) Go to Chuck E Cheese’s- Aside from the crazy kids running around, I actually like Chuck E Cheese’s, even though they won’t let me play in the tunnels. Ski-ball and shooting hoops are my favs. This could be a spendy or inexpensive trip, depending on the choices made. Luckily, my kid doesn’t go for the food and when we do plan to eat there, she’s itching to go play instead. So, if we all eat at home before we go that would save us money and probably headaches from the extended exposure. Also, if you sign-up at their website, they email you coupons every so often OR the Sunday coupon inserts have coupons for Chuck E Cheese’s rather often. Thankfully, they’ve offerred a coupon for just tokens every time I’ve seen them. I know the 5/15 Smart Source insert has 2 for just tokens. One is $15 for 90 tokens (about 17 cents each) and the other is $25 for 160 tokens (about 16 cents each). If you don’t end up using them all, you can always save them for next time. Estimated Price: $15-25
2) Learn Karate- She got her grandma to pay for this, how resourceful. 
FREE (for us at least)
3) Learn how to play soccer- We could take her to a park w/ her soccer ball and do our best. The soccer classes have been filled up since early spring, so no luck there. FREE
4) Go to the beach- It’s kinda funny because she actually means the Oregon Coast. She’s not talking about nice warm water and tons of sunshine; I’m starting to wonder if she knows there’s better beach experiences out there. From Portland, we only have to drive around 2 hours to get to the beach, so we could just make this into a fun-filled day. We’d be able to save money by bringing the cooler and not staying overnight. I think being in the car for 2 hours would drive our puppy nuts, she still freaks out just driving down the street. So, we could take her (the puppy) and bear the piercing pain OR pay $$ for a doggy day-care or hotel. Nobody I know would want to dog-sit and I couldn’t leave her home by herself that long. Estimated Price: $50-100 which includes gas.
5) Have a family game night- Easy Peasy! We have a TON of games around here, probably too many for such a small apartment. FREE
6) Go camping together, me, you, daddy- This is going to sound bad, but we’ve never taken her camping; we haven’t taken the puppy either if that makes it any better. We don’t go to campgrounds with plumbing and lots of people around, and I’m trying to put off the whole ‘peeing outside’ thing off as long as possible. I wouldn’t even know where to start. I think it’s funny how she listed us all and left out the dog—I don’t think she wants to deal with her while camping. I don’t think this one’s going to happen this summer.
7) Go to Grandma’s for the 4th of July- CHECK
8 ) Spend the night at my best-friend’s house- This one is in the works and sounds great to me, her friend’s whole family just adores her. FREE
9) Have a sleep-over- Hopefully, she’ll want to have it at her grandma’s (huge-a$$ house) instead of our tiny place. It’d be a really lame sleepover otherwise. Estimated Price: FREE (if @ grandma’s) to $10.
10) Start the Chore Store again- What’s the Chore Store? Well, I’ve been working on our kiddo with money since she was really little and wanted to encourage saving and learning the value of money. So I came up with a box of stuff w/ prices on it that she could buy with her allowance. When she got her allowance, she’d save 1/2 of it to put in her savings account and then could spend the rest. I put stuff in there that she could get right away as well as stuff that she’d have to save up for to help her learn. It worked brilliantly and she loved it; she was excited all week long. I got plenty of stuff around that I could put it together for free, and then pick up stuff now and then to restock, usually with coupons, clearance or the dollar store. FREE
11) Start getting my allowance again- She stopped getting it because she would do everything else except keep her room clean. She’s just lazy and said that it wasn’t fun to have to put stuff back when she was done. So she stopped getting her allowance. If I can convince her to clean her room and keep it that way, then she can get an allowance again. We’d probably start out at $0.50 a week and see how that goes; the cool thing is she is happy to get that much. She doesn’t really need money right now, so it’s not that big of a deal. Estimated Price: $2.00 per month
12) Play your wii- I’m a clumsy person, things just seem to happen even when I’m careful and it seems she’s the same way. I know they have those strap clips so that the controller doesn’t fly out of your hand, but I don’t really trust them with her. I should probably let her play it though, it’s kinda selfish if I don’t. She gets to play the Xbox 360 and her Nintendo DS, so it’s not like I play video games and don’t let her—it’s just the Wii that worries me. I’ll let her though, what’s the worst that could happen? Estimated Price: FREE to $900 if the TV needs replacing.
13) Learn how to ride a bike- Bad parenting move here, yeah, I know! How is it our 8 year old doesn’t know how to ride a bike? I blame my honey, learning to ride a bike should fall in his duties. Yep, that’s it—I’ll get him to do it. She doesn’t even have a bike at our apartment, so we’d have to get it from Grandma’s house. FREE + possible bribery
14) Have a puppet show- She just wants to put on a puppet show for us. That’s always fun and entertaining. We’ll probably attend more than one this summer, but the admission is FREE
15) Have fun- I’m sure we’ll get her to have some fun.