Free Night at the Indianapolis Children's Museum

You can read here about the Free First Thursday nights at The Children's Museum of Indiana.

Free Museum Day - Saturday, 9-27-08

Here is a great FREE activity for this weekend!

Smithsonian Magazine is advertising a "Free Museum Day". It is THIS SATURDAY - September 27, 2008! That's not much time to plan - but it's worth checking out!

"Enjoy free general admission for you and a guest to hundreds of museums and cultural venues nationwide."

You can print a pass here that will get you and a guest into one of hundreds of museums participating in this program.

To see if there is a participating museum near you go here to check out the map.

We participated in this 2 years ago and had a great time going to Conner Prairie a local living history museum that we could not normally afford to visit. This museum would normally cost us $29.00 for the day.

Where Have We Been? - Fun Day!

To those of you who come to The Savings Swap on a regular basis, you have noticed I have been very negligent at my blogging lately!

So what have I been up to? Well, as you can see here I went bowling! Okay, that was just one afternoon! But, I have had my parents in visiting from out of town for 10 days.

Last week we expanded our "Fun Day" and included Grandpa and Grandma. Little Z earned enough passes from the summer reading program to take us all Mini-golfing and bowling! We had a great day and even rode the go-carts and played some arcade games.

It was really special because Little Z decided that is how he wanted to spend his library points and earned them for this special day. I think it meant a lot to Grandpa and Grandma. Thankfully we had a wonderful day and beautiful weather!

We ended the week with a trip to the State Fair! What a great evening! Here are pictures from this year and last year. I always take Little Z's picture at the corn field to see how he has grown in a year!

2007

2008

My blogging will be spotty for another week or two because I will be on vacation and don't know if I will have any Internet access! I hope to be back soon!

I Love Chick-fil-a

Anyone that knows me already is quite aware of this fact! I love LOVE - Chick-fil-a! We have been there twice this month. Once for the "Dress like a Cow" free chicken day and again the other day for Kid's night and it was also Customer Appreciation Week.


Here are a few fun pictures from our Chick-fil-a trips!


Now - to make it even more tempting to stop for some chicken, our local Chick-fil-a has started a free sandwich program. Bring in a gas receipt for over $35.00 and get a free sandwich. That is a great deal for us because we can just get a kids meal along with that and we're good to go!























The first photo is from "Cow Appreciation Day" and the second photo is from "Customer Appreciation Week".

Fun Day

Okay, so yesterday I decided to just take off for the day. When Little Z woke up I told him this was Fun Day and we were going to have a good time. So, we hurried through our chores (making beds, emptying trash, breakfast clean-up etc) and headed out for the day.

We started out by heading to the $1.00 movie. If you haven't seen the free and $1.00 kids movies out this Summer read this. We saw the movie "Running Free". It was a wonderful family movie - I'll give you a review on it in a separate post. We actually got in free because another moviegoer had an extra punch card!

Next we headed over to the mall - I had a few things to pick up at Macy's! We also picked up our free Auntie Anne's Pretzel and I got a free Starbucks iced coffee! (With card from this weekend's paper)

Then after the mall we drove thru Chick-fil-a (our favorite!) I had a coupon for nuggets (from calendar) and Little Z got a kiddie meal.

We spent the rest of the afternoon at the pool and came home for dinner (leftovers! yea - no cooking!) And then off to church.

It was a great day and now today I have to make up for it by doing laundry all day!!! Oh well, It was worth it.

Memorial Day Weekend - Staying at Home

We decided to stay at home this weekend. We have spent the last several Memorial Days camping (or trying to camp- but that's a long story!)

This year with gas prices at 3.99 we decided to just stay home. Instead of going out of town, we made this little fire ring in our back yard.

It is made out of 20 curved landscape bricks we bought at Lowe's. I used the $10.00 off $25.00 purchase that you can sign-up for here. (You have to use a Visa with the coupon - I used my Visa debt.)

The bricks were 1.29 each, so the total was just a little over $27 including tax. With the coupon it was right around $17.00. Much cheaper than a weekend away. I think that Little Z has decided that he and daddy will camp out soon in the back yard for fun!

We put that scalloped piece of brick on top while Little Z was roasting his hot dog so he could lean the stick on it. (But that's not really part of the fire ring.)

Saturday morning Little Z and Daddy went to the park with his little wagon and picked up all kinds of stick off the ground. Little Z thought this was great fun - he's really into sticks!

We will need to get a few more things to complete our back yard hangout. We've decided that it will be worth getting real roasting poles for the dogs and marshmallows after the stick we were using caught on fire! Also I plan to go to Kroger and stock up on hot dogs for the freezer while they are on sale this week for .69 a pack.

We have had a great time already! Have you changed your usual Summer plans because of gas prices? If you have any good ideas for vacationing at home of fun things to do at home please make a comment or post it on your blog and leave us a link in the comments!

Indy 500 Pole Day Qualifications

This is Little Z at the Speedway. In the back and to the left of him you can see Helio Castroneves in the red racing suit.
















Here's Miss M at the Indianapolis 500 Pole Day Qualifications. She loved all the excitement!
It was a great day, beautiful weather, and we were able to spend only $15.00 for the day by using a coupon for 2 for 1 tickets from the newspaper - so $10.00 for the tickets and $5.00 for parking. We were able to take our bagged lunch in with us!

Staying at Home

I was really encouraged by Crystal's post to spend more time just being at home. Today we cleaned our coat closet, vacuumed the van and just had some fun on the swing. This is little Miss M's first time out on the swing set - she really enjoyed herself!

If you haven't read it yet I recommend reading Crystal's post here: