by Ashley
Happy Monday!
I hope you had a great weekend!
We had a good one! On Saturday we took advantage of Free Museum Day and on Sunday we checked out our new HOA’s pool and splash pad! Our old HOA had a pool, but our new HOA has TWO pools plus this totally abandoned Splash Pad we had all to ourselves!
Plus bonus – the HOA cost is included in my rent, so it’s not an extra bill on top of/in addition to rent. Score!
I no longer get to spend every weekend with the girls (they’re with me the majority of the time, but we trade-off so they have one full weekend/month with their Dad and one weekend that’s split: one night with me and one night with him). As a result, I’ve gotta take advantage when we’ve got full weekends together! Tough to do when I’m wanting to jam-pack them full of FUN stuff, but I also don’t want to spend $$$! (insert wide-eyed emoji).
As a side-note, though pretty relevant to this blog: I’ve seen a couple people comment asking to know financial details about the separation, but I’m just not ready to give them yet. I’m still in the process of consulting lawyers (have a couple appointments, but have not retained anyone at this point), and just don’t feel like I’m in a place to be spilling financial details that are still forthcoming/being worked out. I will share when they are concretely available.
But suffice it to say, I’m basically operating our budget like Fort Knox right now. Everything is on lock-down with minimums being paid on all until further notice while I try to save and stockpile for a just-in-case scenario.
But not spending any money doesn’t mean we can’t have fun!
Back to the pool – we have this awesome new neighborhood pool (x2) and splash pad we can use for free! And we still have our annual Desert Museum family passes that were gifted to the girls for their birthday in June (good until next June!) And if we can keep finding these one-off free events like the Free Museum Day, we’ll be able to fill our weekends for FREE just fine. With all the fun Fall things coming up (movies in the park, music in the park, fall festival, etc. etc.), there should be plenty of things in store!
How do you make the most of your weekends with frugal family fun?
Hi, I’m Ashley! Arizonan on paper, Texan at heart. Lover of running, blogging, and all things cheeeeese. Freshly 40, married mother of two, working in academia. Trying to finally (finally!) pay off that ridiculous 6-digit student loan debt!
The weekends without kids are going to be tough! If I were you, I’d start lists of things to structure your weekends with the kids (fun stuff!) and the weekends without the kids. The off weekends would be a great time to bulk cook, stock up with groceries, clean, catch up on work email and really enable you to make the most out of every minute you have with the girls.
I imagine they’ll have a lot of different emotions going on as they process the change, so using the time they’re away to ensure you can be 100% present when they are there will be key.
Such good advice! Thank you!
When our kids were young, we made an activity jar. We would take an empty jar and fill it with scraps of paper that listed fun and free things to do – library, spray park, build a blanket fort, play doh, movie marathon, craft day, museum, make cookies, etc…..then each of our kids would take turns and draw an activity from the jar on a open day. They loved getting a turn to choose the activity and we parents loved not having to constantly come up with new activities.
You could make an adult jar too for your free weekends – home pedicure, library day, coffee with a friend, movie with a friend, new museum:)