Welcome Back!

I am so glad you decided to join me again for our series on “Summer Dates on a Budget”.

Everyone loves getting to spend a few hours alone with the husby, boyfriend, or partner, without having to eat your food cold because you fed the baby first, or wiping food out of your hair that your 2 year old threw at you, or in my case having 2 nosey teenagers listen to your every word that I’m trying to say to my husby :/  How romantic is that!

Our emotional, mental and physical (: health strives for these outings alone.  But I know that for most of the time, money is tight and the last place you think to spend it is on your self. Right?

There is always diapers to buy, water bill to pay, school supplies to think about, not to mention that for some reason these little people in our house think they need to eat 3 times a day (:

If you are having some of those same thoughts I just mentioned, then you come to the right place, because I am going to give you another Summer Date Idea on a Budget.

And if you have missed my last 2 posts in the series, I hope you will catch up.

*Click on picture to take you to link Have you heard the old saying “While the kids are away, the parents will play”?

Well thats exactly what my husby and I did!

A couple weeks ago while K and L were away at church camp, husby and I took advantage of the alone time and had a summer date. You might be saying, “Well, why did you have a date if you were home alone?” This is my thought, sometimes you need to do things that you don’t normally do.  Take advantage of having a night alone and go somewhere or do something together to laugh and have fun.

If I stayed home, this is what would have happened……

1) I would have cooked dinner

2) Then I would have cleaned up the kitchen

3) After taking the kitchen towels I just used to the laundry room,  I would notice the laundry piling   up and automatically started laundry

4) Of course the dryer would have been full of dry clothes so I would have to fold them and put them away.

Do you catch my drift?  There is always something at home that needs to be done and there would have been alone time alright, but it would be me alone doing housework and the husby alone doing whatever :/  Not a very romantic night in my book!

So we chose to a have a date night at our local aquatic park instead!  I think it was a definite win-win for me!

I know, I know, aquatic parks can be expensive, especially if your whole family is in tow.  If my family of four takes a day to enjoy the park, we leave spending no less than $50. Ekkk  That is a chunk out of our weekly budget.  But out local water park offers “family nights” certain days of the week from 5-8 pm.  Perfect time for us, and the best thing is its only $3 a person on those nights! SCORE!

So I put swimsuit on, packed the sunscreen and beach towels and we were ready to get our swim on! Our Aquatic Park just opened last year.  It’s not extremely big but they do have an awesome lazy river I love to float on!

You would think with it being family night that it would be extremely over crowded.  But that wasn’t the case.  In fact, we got lounge chairs right away, laid our towels on them, and because it was so hot decided to get in the lazy river right away.

After floating for quite sometime, we headed back to our lounge chairs to relax.  And you know what was amazing, no kiddo’s yelling, “Mom watch me slid!”, or “Mom I’m starvinggg.” for the hundredth time, or worrying that your kids have drowned while the lifeguard wasn’t watching.  Yes, I’m one of those paranoid moms :/

After relaxing, I decided I was starvingggg!  LOL  So off we went to the concession stand to see how much junk food we could find!  No judgement, its Date Night!

Yum!  Pretzels with cheese, corn dogs and Pina Colada Slush Puppies! This is the life!  And we only spent $6 for food!

After we ate, we went back to play.  Husby even talked me into going down the slids!  It must be love, because I’m not a slid kinda girl (:

Overall it was a great night!  And really, 3 hours at a water park is long enough for me.  But it was a great time to relax and be with the husby.  And all together we only spent $12!  Wow!  Cheap Date huh!

I encourage you to check out your local aquatic parks and pools.  See what specials they have going on!  Remember as long as you are having fun together, thats all that matters.  And I got a nice tan as a bonus (: