Budget, Plan and Have Fun

Fun with kids in public places like parks, zoos, museums or other entertainment or amusement place can be a memory you will never forget for one of two reasons. Everybody had a fantastic time, or something, or someone, went terribly awry; and oh my gosh, you/they will never live it down.
Whether your disaster had to do with money or people, a little planning may have averted the trouble. Here are a couple of tips to help you prepare.

• Use the interent – The internet is a great place for ideas. Once you have decided to go to a certain place, you can usually find a website for the location you are going to visit. Visit the website and budget your time, your costs and your mileage (see below for more information.)
• Budget – This relieves a lot of stress. Budgeting your expenses and your time will help you to communicate with all adults and children participating. You don’t have to be extremely detailed. If everybody has a general idea of expectations, kids won’t whine so much about being bored and adults won’t whine so much about being ready to go. It also helps elevate some of the tension when the, “I wants,” creep up. Here is the budget. If you want that, you have to sacrifice this. Don’t forget flexibility. Fun with kids does not always go as planned and flexibility is the key for both kids and adults to have fun.
• Budget Your Time – If you have small children, you need to consider naps, potty breaks and feeding schedules. Visit the website of the location and get a list of activities. Review the list and create a rough agenda of things you want to do. This is to be rough. Again, fun with kids does not always go as planned and flexibility is the key for both kids and adults to have fun. With an agenda it will help you to be flexible so you can adjust for non-optional events like naps and feedings while having a list in mind of what you can move around to accommodate your child’s, or spouse’s, needs and wants.
• Budget Gas Money – There are several places on the internet that allow you to map directions from your home to your destination. (Yahoo Maps is just one. http://maps.yahoo.com/) This is a great tool not only for directions but for budgeting how much money you will spend on gas. I use a simple formula which is miles round trip from home to destination divided by my vehicle’s average miles per gallon times the average price per gallon of gas. For example, to drive from Houston to Austin round trip is roughly 330 miles round trip (does not include driving around Austin). The formula looks like (330/15)*3 = $66 dollars for gas. The 330 is the miles round trip. The 15 is the average miles per gallon my car gets, and the 3 is the average price of gas per gallon. So 330 miles, should only consume 22 gallons at 15 miles per gallon (does not account for speeding, traffic or detours). Twenty two gallons time three is $66.
• Take a Cooler - Regardless of where our field trips take us whether it is an hours drive or just 5 minutes, I always pack a small cooler. I always pack at least one drink and one snack for everybody going. This really helps the budget by preventing temptation to buy at snack stands or road side stops. It also helps prevent temptation of buying dessert if you know you have a tastey treat waiting for you in the car. If it is a long trip, I pack two; one for bored kids asking, “are we there yet?” on the way there and one for worn out kids on the way home.
• Reward Grab Bag – This is my way of keeping my kids from asking, “are we there yet?” I usually don’t take the Grab Bag unless the trip is a couple of hours or more. Basically, when the noise level in the car has gone beyond my patience, I announce quiet time. If you are quiet for 15 minutes, you get to grab from the bag. If my children are being troublesome on one hour trips, I may take the bag and say they have to be good for the entire drive time. The grab bag is not hard to fill. I fill it with little toys, small crafts like paper airplanes, crayons, color pages, stickers, puzzles and books from dollar stores. Wal-mart has a cheap toy isle where you can usually find stuff for less than a dollar, and Target has a dollar section that has seasonal fun stuff. Some of the toys are toys we have collected from kids meals. They are unopened kids meal toys. Some went to the grab bag because my kids did not eat/behave well and lost their toy privilege. Some went to the grab bag because the meal was eaten somewhere the kids forgot about the toy as they ran off to play (picnics at the park). Regardless, it is a cheap way to reward your kids for good behavior.