Quality Time–Priceless

Some friends of mine had the opportunity to celebrate their 7 year anniversary together last night! I received a phone call late in the afternoon yesterday and I was excited to hear what my friend Thomas had planned for his wife Vanessa. Besides telling me where he was taking her, he also asked if I could babysit for the evening. Well of course it was not a problem for me. Those kids probably missed me anyway! (Not as much as I’ve missed them, of course) When the children and I get together, it’s promised to be a great time. Oh yeah! We would go out to the movies and we would stop for some pizza and some fun at the arcade or something. Well, times have changed a little bit and I no longer have extra money to put towards a fun filled night out with the kids. Honestly, it kind of broke my heart. I was desperate for some ideas on how to entertain these little guys without having to dip into my little bit of savings. I started looking around my apartment for some things we could do. Of course we could spend some time playing some video games and watching some old films. I just knew it wouldn’t be enough to keep them busy for the whole night. We could go to the park for a short while, but I knew it would get dark soon after they arrived. So I gathered a bunch of jars and a roll of pennies. I decided we could make a little game out of this. It could be like the carnival games where you had to toss the pennies in the jar. I also used the cardboard from the soda case. I cut out about four slots into the box. Above each slot I put a number. If you slid the penny through the slot you get the amount of points that’s above the slot. After an “x” amount of rounds, the winner would be the one who had the most points. Of course, everyone was in charge of keeping their own score.  (Math practice for the kids) I had some old comic books that I collected when I was younger. I used them as prizes for our winners. It ended up being a fantastic night. The kids and I both agreed it was one of our best times together. They loved their prizes. The part that I loved was spending time with them of course. And it was a plus that it didn’t cost me a cent.