Family Fun Day

 

Last Saturday, I had almost convinced Matthew to follow through on his commitment to take the kids to Great Wolf Lodge since they had kept their side of the agreement and learned to swim last Winter. We had plans last Spring but they got cancelled . . .  Stupid Covid.

We were about to hit the reservation button until we realized it was going to be significantly more money than last time around. That did it. He decided that he would rather bribe them with a shopping spree than spend the money on GWL (which he already dislikes). We put it to the kids for their consideration and within milliseconds they opted for the shopping spree, "Can we go today?" they said.

Nope, we weren't going that day. We decided that since Matthew was going on a business trip the next week we would meet him up in Portland on the morning he flew home and go to the mall. We even let the kids skip their online school if they had all their homework done (I have never known my daughter to do her homework so efficiently before).

The day was lovely. We talked about some ground rules before we left - no complaining on family fun day and  no wandering off. Pretty simple. The kids did awesome. They spent copious amounts of money on Legos, a few dubious purchases at a favorite game shop, and then back to the Lego store to spend the rest of their money.

We had lunch at Chick-fil-A, cookies from Crumble and dinner at my parent's. And we got to see Matthew after being apart. Just a great day. I don't think we will do many shopping sprees unless we find ourselves in another bribery crunch, but it was fun to have this experience today.