Stepkids!

My wonderful stepkids are visiting me! They are so nice to stay with me considering that their dad is out of town on business. We went to the community pool today and had so much fun! The kids had a blast! The nice thing is that Chris can go back and forth between the pool, community center and skateboard park. It keeps him from being bored. Kaylin was practicing her diving all day. I laid out and unfortunately got really burnt. I put on sunscreen but forgot to reapply it. Lesson learned!

Mom I'm Bored!

Kids wait all year long to scream out in the halls "Schools Out!" but two days after their home they're whining "I'm bored!" while flicking their brother/sister endlessly! So what to do with them? Well Abbi at Proverbs 31 Living has a great article that you can read: School is out! ~ What to do now!

Go read the article and let me know if you have any more ideas! My stepkids may stay with me for part of the summer, especially since Tim is gone and I have no idea what to do with them. Hopefully we will go camping and me and Kaylin will cook and bake a lot. I would love to get the kids to help me with my garden. It would be nice for them to learn. We live out in the country and it can be a double edged sword. We have a community center that's about 20 miles away but with gas prices that's kind of far. My stepkids are 10 and almost 13 so little kid activities won't work. Luckily they have friends here and that will help a lot as long as the other kids are not at their grandparents!

What are you going to do with your kids this summer?

Involve Your Kids

This is an excellent post about involving your kids in your frugal journey: http://www.frugal-families.com/blog/67/its-a-plan/. I love the authors attitude and her success in helping kids understand and become part of a very difficult situation to sometimes handle. Kids are bombarded by materialism and commercials today. All you hear is I want, I want, I want. I don't remember seeing this many commercials when I was young. And the amount of items that are targeted to young children. Today I saw a drinkable yogurt that was targeted to kids. I bet it is much more expensive than the regular yogurt. They all look really cool so the kids have to have it. I guess it just takes good parenting and teaching kids about consumerism. I'm not really sure. I don't have to deal with it all the time because we only have the kids on weekends but I definitely want to prepare myself for when we have kids fulltime. Helping the kids become involved will curb the feeling of being deprived and too much sacrifice. It can become a game. Also, a tip to try is that the kids can help save money at the store and the grocery money they save can be put towards a family goal. How do you keep your family involved in this frugal game that we play everyday?