Happy Spring Break! So excited for this week, any time the kids have off school, I get excited! Spring break, is often associated with fun trips, disney and vacation. Well, that is what my kids think spring break should be! Not sure why they think that, other than they have lots of friends who travel.
As a family of ten, we are on a budget. Disney, although a dream vacation, for our family just to walk into the park would be close to 1000.00! Can you believe it? So Disney will have to wait.
But is is still spring break! SO what to do? We want a family vacation but we are on a budget.
HAVE A STAYCATION!!
A vacation that you stay at home for! Staycation!
Sounds super fun right? I thought so, but then I realized that we really need to deep clean the house. Winters are long and cold and messy and spring is a great time to do a nice deep clean.
So faced with that dilemma of wanting to give my kids a fun spring break and wanting to use this time of having everyone home, I came up with a plan.
I was going to have a staycation that used both of the ideas! Vacation with our family full of fun, we stay on budget, and we still get lots of stuff done.
I decided to look at the budget see what we could afford, make a list of what would be fun to do and see if that budget could work with that.
I also looked at what we needed to get done and how could we get the most done if a good amount of time.
Once those two things were done, it had to be made fun so they are excited to not only get the chores done but also make some great memories too!
I knew exactly how I wanted to share the fun things for the day, since we are on a budget, some things in our staycation would be well…. staying at home! Still fun!
My friend Tammy, made a little envelope system that each day the kids would open the envelope to see what fun they were having. I thought brilliant idea and decided to use that.
My family loves games, and we found some great deals on a few games and I wanted to use those also.
Okay, so I have some games, some fun things to do each day and a list of the chores we need to get done.
Now for the last part!
I decided to trick my kids! I know terrible… but it really helped!
We had a family meeting to discuss spring break and to tell them we are having a staycation this year! Everyday we would be doing something fun after 5pm. I told them during the day, there was a sister in the ward who wanted to hire them to make some extra money by helping her clean her house. She would pay them $2.00 an hour if they wanted to come and help.
EVERY KID SAID YES!
I told them she sent over hard hats that needed to be worn while helping her. They thought that was hilarious but they were excited.The plan is we wake up everyone at 8:30,( they wanted to sleep in a bit..) eat breakfast, open our game, open an evnvelope and see what fun thing we are doing that night. Then as a family we would be going over to her house at 9am, break for a bag lunch at 12, and be done working at 5pm. We go home, have a fun dinner and do our fun thing that evening.
Kids are excited! She did not need us to work Monday, we used yesterday to deep clean the main floor of our house, and to make sure all bedrooms are clean so we can focus on their job this week! What they don’t realize yet, is that we are the family we are helping to clean! It is our house!
I even made time sheets!
So each day I will share what our fun thing was and what we worked on! I am excited to share this, although this is not a normal blog post for me and it is probably much too long, I wanted to share that even if you are on a budget you can still have a family vacation and still have lots of fun with out spending a ton of money~
I did buy the Child Construction Hats – from amazon, there was 12 to a pack, and I got these games.
Loopin Louie Board Game
It’s Bunco Time Collector’s Tin
Gas Out Game
Chutes and Ladders
I did find some of the games at goodwill and a few on clearance, but if you don’t want to do a lot of running around you can just order them from amazon.
I am going to share the fun other things we do!
Last night was karaoke, and taco bell for dinner! HUGE TREAT!! We played the game and sang and had a blast! The little kids went to bed and dad and the bigger kids watched a scary movie. I went to bed, I hate scary movies!
Super excited to play this game!
IT was a super first day of vacation, we got the house deep cleaned, we played, we did fun stuff and we stayed within a small budget! AND as a bonus, we got done so early that we were able to throw a softball game in there! I will share some better pictures tomorrow! I hope this gives you a few ideas on what you can do if you want a family vacation and are on a budget… now you know! STAYCATION!!
What fun things do you have planned for your spring break? I would love to hear!
Smile Book:
Hinckley loves to dance, it is the most awkward looking dance but I love it!
I love everyone home!
Mike asked me at noon, “so are you getting dressed today?”
I ate five tacos!
