Cheap Fun and Star Wars

One of my New Year's Resolutions was to keep track of where our money goes.  When you start writing down every dollar spent, you become a little more reluctant to buy those (unneccessary) items that always find their way into the Target shopping cart.  We have also been looking for ways to entertain ourselves that don't cost much.  Granted, it's only been 27 days, but so far so good!

For one of our "cheap fun nights," we had a basement campout.  We ordered pizza from Dominos ($12.70  and we easily get a dinner and lunch out of that) and let the kids pick movies.  They chose The Incredibles and Star Wars.  With regard to Star Wars, Thomas has succeeded in making them all love his favorite movie.  They have seen 4/6 movies (episodes II and III will have to wait until they are a little older) and they constantly ask to watch them again.  Last night, Kara spent several minutes telling me all about how Darth Vader is mean, but Obi Wan Kenobi is nice.   They also like to pretend they are the characters--Anna designates herself as Princess Leia, Jack is Luke, Kara is the "Golden Robot" (also designated by Anna), Thomas is Han Solo or Obi Wan, and I am usually asked to be either R2D2 or Chewbacca.  I think Kara and I get the short end of that stick.   Sometimes, they change it up--yesterday, they spent about 2 hours pretending it was Lumpy's birthday.  For those not in the know, Lumpy is Chewbacca's son, at least according to some strange book we have.  They had a party in their playset and spent the afternoon calling Jack Lumpy.  To further their indoctrination, Thomas is building a Lego Death Star and I kid you not when I say Jack can spend hours playing with the little lego man while Thomas builds.  Kara comes in a pretty close second on the lego enjoyment.  In fact, both kids will frequently choose playing with the lego men over their nightly hour of television.  So far, they haven't reenacted any of the lightsaber battles or tried to "freeze" anyone (something they seemed to fixate on, so we made sure to explain that he was placed in carbonite and not really frozen). 

Back to the campout, we had a picnic on the floor, blew up some air mattresses and settled in for movie night.  I think I fell asleep first.  I woke up when Thomas turned the movie off, not being one to look a gift horse in the mouth, I made my way upstairs for more comfortable sleeping arrangements.  Thomas said the night went well, they spent a lot of time fighting over who got to hold the lantern and all woke up by 6:30.  He kept them entertained until they came to get me at 8.  Then, we had a blueberry pancake breakfast.  The kids loved it all. 

It was a fun weekend, we also went to see Happy Feet 2 at the base theater.  Talk about a bargain!  Kids under 5 are free and adults are only $4.50. We took them to dinner afterward and called it a family date.  I will not put how much we spent at dinner at IHOP afterward.  But, it was not in keeping with our bargain hunting.  What happened to kids eat free?   This weekend, we may give The Muppets a try (sans IHOP).